War of Realities (Redone and Improved)

[Maharg67]

10^th

THE ROAR OF THE GREAT CENTIPEDE

FINDING A WAY THROUGH BROKEN BARRIERS

 

Part 1

 

The big machine moved forward on no less than sixteen wheels with the great energy weapon balanced carefully above it. It moved along a great wide high roadway tunnel far beneath the surface of the Patriot DC, the DC Wastelands, escorted by eight wheeled amphibious Atomic Land Armoured Vehicles and power armoured soldiers known as Patriot Warriors. These Patriot Warriors were hulking fanatical followers of the DarkZiazin that used to be President James Patriot Jackson and they were not to be confused with the Patriot Guard, especially the comparatively weak Patriot Guard of the Patriot Republic of the DC Islands.

 

These Patriot Warriors were demiclones of the DarkZiazin himself, each of superhuman physical abilities but also of berserker rage and insane urges. They had been given treatments similar to those that created super-mutants but these were not super-mutants. Most were the size of massemoths but a few were huge behemoth sized brutes with special power armour and huge weapons.

 

They had stole the machine from the Gormonk Research, Development and Manufacturing Corporation with heavy losses for the vehicle had been very well secured. Leonardo Gormonk was an inventive, scientific and engineering genius backed up by many other talented and driven people, androids, cyborgs and robots. The Centipede was one of his highest achievements and was designed to destroy falling space debries crashing down from low orbit before they could do any real harm.

 

The DarkZiazin wanted it to break an ancient seal to a great and ancient thing of power known only as Maharg67 by code found only referred to in a very few places. Maharg67, what was it? Was it a machine, an organism or something else altogether? Professor James Patriot Jackson had supposedly designed and built it, according to one story, the supposed brother to the Mad US President who was actually no such thing but the story was false.

 

Part 2

 

The seal lay ahead! It was ancient, alien and powerful but from outside it looked like a smooth metallic stone disk embedded deeply into a steeply sloping wall of heavy rock mass. To make the seal show itself would take time and effort. The Centipede came to a halt in the huge dimly lit cavern chamber surrounded by a crazy mixture of other machines, modular buildings structures, rampways, walkways, turrets, robots, shuffling robed semiclones and subclones, empty storage canisters in almost neat piles and much else.

 

All efforts to expose the seal, let alone to break through it, had so far failed.

 

The DarkZiazin superclone, Doctor Doomwise, stood in metallic distorted armour almost like medeval plate armour of Europe, with eyes staring through large visors and a dark green cloak flowing down his back and partly around his sides. In truth he was damned tired of the whole frustrating project, tired of the DarkZiazin's demands, tired of trying to control the insane Patriot Warriors, tired of getting no results from his efforts and tired of wasting so many resources for nothing. The Patriot Warriors only had real respect for their own demiclone leader, the Patriot Prime Warrior Sadobutcher, a name he had chosen for himself and which was quite appropriate. The Patriot Warriors gave little respect to Doctor Doomwise, even when he was openly giving them orders or inspecting their ranks or otherwise interacting with the berserker fools.

 

Then there were the strange psychic sensation that came from the seal, from behind it, of a brooding ancient power, of endless sleeping, of endless waiting, of endless desire for freedom. It was something far more powerful than the DarkZiazin himself even including all of his cloned avatars and extensions such as Doctor Doomwise himself. It was Maharg67 but it was more than that, it was what ever Maharg67 was linked to.

 

Doctor Doomwise stood on a high tower, fortified of course, and studied the ancient seal and, way below himself, the newly captured Centipede machine. As far as he was concerned, something smelled wrong with the operation to steal the amazing wheeled machine. It had been too easy despite all of the dead and wounded Patriot Warriors. At the last moment they had broken through and the enemy had seemingly fled in terror, leaving the Centipede easy to take. But the DarkZiazin would not listen, he rarely did when he was carried away with his triumphs.

 

Part 3

 

The Centipede, not the real Centipede but a booby-trapped copy of amazingly good design and build, exploded horrifically. The blast of force, flames and electromagnetic pulse ripped out in all directions and the great cavern chamber became a reflecting trap of death and destruction. Only the fact that many and much were in a bunkerplex dug down under the heavy rock floor itself with much difficulty, saved anybody and anything of real value. Doctor Doomwise himself had ordered many important resources brought down into the bunkerplex, including many semiclones and subclones, but he had happily set up many Patriot Warriors for death.

 

Doctor Doomwise sat deep in his control chamber even as a gentle shudder went through the bunker. He was not generally happy, he never really was, but he was satisfied to see so many Patriot Warriors get killed off. Now, perhaps, the DarkZiazin would provide him with an elite armed force that he could more easily control, which would respect him more and which would have the intelligence to detect the difference between a real Centipede and a fake, booby trapped one.

 

But then a big 3Dwallscreen lit up and there was the craggy, ugly, scarred face of Patriot Prime Warrior Sadobutcher who was grinning in triumphant hatred. "You tried to destroy most of my brave and noble warriors, Doctor Doomwise, but you failed as you so often do. You are weak. You are a fool. You should have seen that the Centipede was a trick. I lost many of my best warriors taking it and I blame you."

 

Doctor Doomwise sighed. "Oh, please stop being so dramatic. We both know that you are the one who messed up. The DarkZiazin gave you the task of triple checking the Centipede before you brought it here but I know that no such checks took place. You were so eager to come back here in triumph, to show of your prize, that you went against orders. As for what the DarkZiazin will do, well I do not know. The DarkZiazin is the DarkZiazin."

 

The 3Dwallscreen snapped back to its normal logo of Doctor Doomwise, a rather nice one he had designed himself, and it was clear that Sadobutcher had failed to concern Doctor Doomwise, at least not any more than he was already.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

 

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THE CENTIPEDE

PLEASE CHECK OUT GORMONK'S OTHER LEGO CREATIONS IN DRUID'S GARDEN

IN 'LEGO DIGITAL DESIGNER CREATIONS'

MY THANKS TO GORMONK, EXTRODINARY LEGO MODEL MAKER

Edited July 14, 2010 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

11^th

IN SPACESTATION FREEDOM WATCHES THE DC WATCHER

THE ARRIVAL OF CAPTAIN KIRK OF THE MARS FEDERATION

 

Part 1

 

Spacers of all nations had rediscovered the Unity long lost many thousands of years ago to humanity or so they believed. Be they prime humans or zeromans adapted to zero gravity through gen-engineering or moonmans adapted to the light gravity of the moon, they were linked through the HubMentality of the HubMind. Yet, oddly enough, in many ways there were more independent as individuals than old type humans were.

 

Spacestation Freedom was at L5, the most stable orbital point between the gravitational influences of Terra (the Earth) and Luna (the Moon). It had been built huge but was now more so, extended and enhanced with security-safety frameworks extended out from the great big central axis column, the Axis, and the ten great non-spinning and spinning wheels with the spokes reaching out to the rims of each. The original six spinning wheels, every first one going clockwise and every second one going anticlockwise, had been joined by two slower spinning wheels at either end designed for low gravity moonmans to exist in.

 

Smaller outpost-platforms and twin wheeled spacestations floated out from Spacestation Freedom itself as did cleverly designed cone shaped orbital-farms.

 

L5 held other spacestations more distant from Spacestation Freedom and also three big cylinder shaped orbital-habitats of which only two were fully functional and the other was being slowly brought back to newish conditions.

 

The DC Watcher floated in a special cyberchair in a smaller but still large spacestation. She could see the various spacestations, the orbital-platforms and the orbital-habitats. Between them flew multiple purpose shuttletugs as spacepods and spacebots (space robots) of various kinds carried out various duties. The L5 Sector had a population of over a dozen million people. Space-interceptors flew regular patrols and a space-frigate of the Spacer Unionate floated in stationary position beyond.

 

Beyond that floated a far larger, far more powerful space-battleship of the Mars Federation, a fat saucer with two great fins angled upward to the sides, each being topped with a horizontal cylinder. The SFSS ENTERPRISE was commanded by one Captain James Kirk of Terraformed Mars, the red planet turned a mixture of blue (water) brown (arid) dull green (semiarid) and green (fertile). The Terraforming had not worked out perfectly and Mars suffered from big storms, its oceans only covered one sixth of the world and the fertile areas were relatively small. Yet over a billion people lived there in peace and harmony. But they were not of the Unity and they did not particularly trust or like the Unity.

 

Angela Angel was the DC Watcher who watched the District of Columbia by any means that she could. She had assistants and advisers along with various workers, guards, androids and robots but the focus of responsibility was upon her. Why so intense watching; because of the instability of time-space that was focused there and because of the strange readings that came from sensorscanning the New DC. She was close to two hundred years old and had experienced much of the turbulent history of the Spacers.

 

Now she had a new complication to deal with. What did the Mars Federation want? Why had it sent its most powerful spaceship to the L5 Sector after mostly ignoring the Spacer Unionate and its L5-Lunar Sectors for so long? The Spacers had their own space-battleship in the area, the squat globe further in the background, that was also powerful but nobody wanted a confrontation.

 

New DC was slowly growing more troublesome with its readings and now the Orders of Steel had not only entered the region in big numbers but it seemed that they were settling down to stay. What did they want? Why were they positioned in the DC Citadel and why had the original inhabitants let them in?

 

Part 2

 

Suddenly something shot out from the SFSS ENTERPRISE. It was a sophisticated robotic probe and it was shooting towards Terra. Then came two more in quick succession.

 

She frowned with anger that the Federats would dare to do something like that in Spacer Territory with out Spacer permission. They were almost as bad as the Venus Confederation, that had risen in response to the creation of the Mars Federation, that was based on the poorly Terraformed world of Venus and the artificial moon of Patriotica that orbited Venus. Life was just bearable on the polar regions of Venus for humans and even then they had to use fortified bunkers, triple-domes, power armour and heavy armoured vehicles to exist there.

 

Then there were the mysterious Belters but nobody had heard from them in a very long time.

 

Then somebody was coming her. “This is Captain Kirk to DC Watcher. I apologise for the failure to communicate with you before the probes were launched. The premature launch was due to a technical failure.”

 

He was lying, she sensed it strongly, but what could she say? She could not prove it. She looked at the upper half of the strikingly handsome Captain James Kirk on her and frowned softly. He was wearing a lightly armoured spacesuit, slim and supple, of a kind known as a shipsuit that was worn against disasters taking place. The shipsuit suited him well partly because this one had been specially fitted to make him look more impressive.

 

She frowned. “Don’t let any more such accidents happen, my dear sweet young captain, or Spacer battleships will be escorting you out of the area very promptly. There are three of them very close at hand.”

 

Kirk grinned. “I will try to make sure it does not happen.” Then he lost his grin. “The Mars Federation is picking up patterns of disturbance at our two Mars Moon Colonies. Finally my government has decided to act, to take its attention away from Mars and the growing problem with space-raiders, and focus at least partly on what is happening on Terra. The probes are non military devices, as you know, and all data will automatically be shared with you because we need to know what you know.”

 

Disturbances felt so strongly on distant Mars that the isolationist leaning Mars Federation had bothered to send its best warship all the way back to L5? This was not a good sign at all.

 

She frowned softly and then she spoke. “Yes, it seems that we need to cooperate. We must, of course, communicate with the Spacer Presidium.”

 

Kirk nodded. “The Martian Red Tower is already doing so.”

 

The Red Tower was the government centre of the Mars Federation just as the White House and Kremlin had been the symbols of heads of state back on Terra.

 

Part 3

 

It was then that something streaked with amazing speed through space, visible as a white glowing light leaving a long trail behind itself, heading from outer space towards Terra. It was heading towards the DC. As quickly as it had come, it was gone. Yet no Spacer radar, scanners or sensors had picked up its approach.

 

Kirk quickly confirmed that his spaceship had picked up nothing but that was to be expected if far more powerful instruments at L5 had not done so. Floating out there, in L5 was the great StarEar, StarNose and StarEye, each being a huge far reaching instrument of space observation. She had constant feeds from all three and even they had picked up nothing.

 

The streak was artificial but it was seemingly far more advanced than anything that either the Federation or Unionate had. It flew faster through space than anything known to humanity unless the Belters were behind its coming.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited July 14, 2010 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

12^th

 

INVASION OF THE HORDRA RAIDERS

SCATTERED MOMENTS OF CONFLICT AND SURVIVAL

 

Part 1

 

The boat skipped up the river, thrown by the powerful currents just a little, raiders hunkered low and the bow heavy machinegun pounding away at the enemy. The enemy were a series of patrolboats of the Union of the River and were slower but better armed and armoured than their raider enemies.

 

The gunner cursed. So called Hordra Intelligence had indicated that the first settlement of the Union of the River, a cluster of settled river islands, would be easy to take. The fools were mistaken in this as they were in many things.

 

He was shooting at a big, long patrolboat that side on was blasting away at his raiderboat with three 12.7mm heavy machineguns and a 20mm autocannon. To add insult to injury, the so called River Guards had better armour than the raiders.

 

To his starboard a raiderboat exploded, hurling raiders and bits of boat into the air. It was the third gone already and the battle was only just begun.

 

Eight patrolboats, he counted, but doubted he had seen them all. Fifteen raiderboats were attacking, five big ones and the others being of various smaller sizes, but they were all outsized by the patrolboats.

 

He was still hammering away when a missile struck his raiderboat and he was killed instantly along with the five crouching raiders behind himself.

 

Part 2.1

 

They were Power Raiders, the elite of the Hordra Raiders, and yet they were disguised as common raiders but were well armed for such. The thirteen of them paced quickly and efficiently through the broken landscape of DC Delaware. The ocean was close and also a large old ship unloading raiders, equipment and supplies.

 

The Power Raiders knew the truth of the ‘big invasion’, knew that its main purpose was not the invasion itself but what the invasion concealed. Two raiders carried an odd black and grey elongated box between them of light metal armour that was heavily locked.

 

It was dark but in the distance burned pale flames, permanent fires fed by big toxic dumps of strange nature, but they gave no real heat or lights. Not even the local radroaches and such went near those conflagrations.

 

They stepped over and around twisted metal bits sticking up out of the ground whose nature could not be identified, past big mutated bushes and the dead, rotting body of a molerat infested with maggots and corpse-beetles.

 

Then they were at the target point that was prepared long ago though all it looked like was a half buried utility-hatch with an odd set of symbols on it. The Power Raider leader had the others move back after placing the grey and black metallic box on the ground. Then he took out a special keycard, unlocked the utility-hatch and opened it to expose a curious smooth grey tube plunging into the ground. Then he unlocked the black and grey box, now placed next to the open hatch.

 

He and his raiders moved back the way they had come in a hurry. Firstly, they had been told that they were forbidden to see what came out of the box and went down the tube and, secondly, that if it saw them, it would kill them in a most horrific fashion. Lord Hordra himself had so informed them in person.

 

Part 2.2

 

The thing that crawled out of the box was part robotic, part green translucent flesh and part humanoid, squat and red-pink of hard, smooth skin. It was only ten centimetres tall as it sniffed the air, turned and vanished down the tube. Two others soon followed and then the black and grey box was just that, empty and open, abandoned.

 

Part 3

 

Mad Maxi gunned her battlebuggy along the winding dirt track, not a raider herself but being chased by three raider battlebuggies. Bullets exploded off the armoured hull and her daughter fired off a well aimed volley in return from the rear machinegun. Mad Maxi skidded Metal Maxi II around a clump of rubble spilt along ago onto the road and shot forward again with amazing driving skill.

 

Stupid raiders had assumed she was some lone target, was easy picking, but she was bait in a very nasty trap set for the invaders.

 

A raider battlebuggy struck something poking out of the ground and was flipped through the air, coming down on its heavy rollcage with a smashing, crunching, sliding drive. Then it struck a land-mine and exploded, killing the raiders at once.

 

Which was when Mad Maxi’s Girls came into play, their battlebuggies closing in on the raiders from various points and with blazing weapons. Mad Maxi’s vehicles were better built, armoured and armed than those of the raiders. They were faster, more agile and had better rough country travel capacity.

 

The surviving four raider machines did not get far from there. Machines were riddled with bullets or struck by rocket-grenades or shortlong missiles. Snipers with semiautomatic sniper-rifles picked off the scum from across the waters.

 

It was soon over, another small but violent skirmish won but the damned raiders kept coming.

 

Part 4.1

 

The nice little woman sat in a rocking-chair just inside the odd metallic stone shop with its big power-shutter slid up into the structure out of sight. She was softly singing, with a very fine voice, a fine voice, while knitting a fine jumper with amazing speed and ability. Next to her were three and a half neat stacks of good quality knitted goods.

 

A worktron robot was busy sweeping the clean metallic stone floor while a big old ginger tomcat was curled up comfortably asleep on her lap. Indeed there were a few animals wandering free or on perches in the depths of the shop plunging back into darkening conditions. The big wide metallic stone counter stood between customers and the back of the shop that showed displays of many goods. There were neat heaps of blankets, large well designed backpacks, basic but well made tools of various kinds, canisters of food rations, folded packed tents, clever made oil-lamps, litrejons of lamp oil, healing serums in hypovials and a few other items.

 

When the refugees came trudging along the roadway pulling handcarts, the only horses being packhorses, pulling handchairs with children, they were at first wary but far from hostile. There was something about the nice old lady and her shop that caused folks to be at peace, that seemed to suck away fears and hostilities.

 

Part 4.2

 

The refugees turned and went to her and the three leaders, a woman and two men, stood in front of her flower dressed form. She looked up at them through big, golden rimmed glasses but with very keen, sharp eyes.

 

“Free credit! 100 per person including each child, and 20 per horse or dog. The list of items, with prices, is up there. You can have some knitted goods for free, if you so desire them.”

 

The tall, thin man adjusted his glasses. “Very good, very good. We have over a hundred folk in the column and over twenty animals.”

 

The nice old lady smiled. “You have one hundred and five folk and twenty-eight animals, including some pups.”

 

The woman leader nodded. “We need food, water, blankets, healing serums and much else. Sladen here is taking us to a better place.”

 

The nice old lady turned to the other man, not so tall and handsome with a big smiling face but the smile froze on his face. The nice old lady sighed. “Ooohhh, no, Sladen here is taking you to be enslaved. Your destination would have been Paradise Falls and then a place of horrors that I would not speak of.”

 

With a sparkling flash Sladen vanished and a new animal, a white rat with a blue ribbon around its neck, appeared inside the shop. It shot, squealing, into the depths of the shop where it would find no escape except death. The transformed animals who knew better, sensed better, staid up frontward of the shop and settled down. Others had become robots and they worked as robots would.

 

The two leaders looked shocked.

 

Then the nice old lady spoke again. “There is an alternative.” And suddenly to one side of the main shop was an extended area of building with two great doors. “You can go to a place called OrbisSanctuary to start a new settlement in a place of greater safety, fertility and chance of a good future. You will still need to gain goods from me and I will have a shop in that other place also.”

 

Soon they had agreed and soon, laden with new goods including a couple of new handcarts, the folk filed through the big open doors down a long sloping hallway tunnel that actually took them to another world and to a brighter future.

 

Part 5

 

Gangers, as savage as the raiders, fought the invaders trying to take their turf. Both sides fought close shooting or hand to hand, often with blades or club, in the urban madness of a broken city area. Shotguns blasted, crossbows thudded, knives slashed, submachineguns roared and the gangers held their own. Why, because it was their turf and they had set it up to deal with other gangers just as lethal as these raiders. Also they were hardened, experienced urban fighters.

 

Gangers reluctantly joined together and many of them, sensing the world had changed, would keep those alliances. Often the gangs would meld into bigger gangs and, shockingly, would make non aggression deal with local settlers and others, changing the nature of those gangs.

 

But the biggest surprise was that raiders started deserting the Hordra, realising ganger life was generally better and more rewarding than Hordra existence; they joined ganger ranks or started their own gangs allied with other gangs against former comrades.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited July 14, 2010 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

13^th

OVERKILLS ROLLING TO BATTLE

A DECISIVE MOMENT IN BATTLE

 

Part 1

 

The wheeled machines were fairly small but heavily armoured, fast and each had a formation of six special 120mm howitzers. There were six of them as recently gained by the Ironside Mercenaries from their mysterious patron. The eight wheeled machines each had an odd armaglass covered square cabin at front in which sat the cyberlinked driver-gunner. Perhaps these were a weak point of these odd machines but then again they were not meant to get too close to the actual fighting.

 

Marshal Ironside hovered in his armoured and armed squat disk shaped hoverchair where he was relatively safe and yet where he could also overlook both the placement of the six Overkills and the enemy fortified positions. Raiders had taken a position made almost fortress like by walls of rubble and had added to it most cleverly. The Ironsides had lacked the sort of weaponry to wipe out raider heavy mortars that rained mortar shells down upon the mercs when ever they tried to attack.

 

Where were the raiders getting new, more powerful weapons from? Armoured and armed battlebuggies, heavy mortars, 5.5mm miniguns, strong armed and armoured sentrybots, larger battletrucks, garish power armour for the elite minority and too much else. As yet they had not gained proper military war-machines like AFVs or vertibirds.

 

The Overkills spread out and halted at already prepared positions protected by sandbags and hard packed dirt. Each machine was controlled by an Ironside who had undergone hypnocybernetic training-teaching including virtual reality simulations. Such was only a good basics but would do for now. There was a broken but slowly regenerating building structure hiding the newcomer machines from the raiders.

 

Part 2

 

The marshal commed from within his command power armour. “How are final preparations going for the barrage?”

 

A tough female voice commed back. “Completed now that the Overkills have arrived. I have never seen anything like those machines. According the datafiles we got with them, they are products of something called the Gormonk Research, Development and Manufacturing Corporation, the GRDMC. I have not heard of any such corporation.”

 

Marshal Ironside responded. “Later we can look into such matters. We have to get those damned raiders to remove from that position before more raiders arrive. What intelligence have we gained on prisoners?”

 

The other officer responded. “They are mostly down underground being held in surprisingly reasonable conditions. Our spy-devices have picked up strong indications that all captives are being sent to the Eastern Coast to be picked up by an unidentified third party. It seems the raiders trade these captives for equipment and supplies, including the new weaponry they have been gaining. We had assumed that the backers were probably the DomniCommonwealth but now there are some hints it might be the Patriot Republic who is behind the whole raider offensive against the DC Mainland. Oh, the raiders kill and ritually devour all captives too injured or old to get to the coast.”

 

Marshal Ironside growled. “It’s time to teach those monsters some good culinary manners. Begin the barrage.”

 

Seconds later the Overkills unleashed a first volley of 36 howitzer special shells and the raider fort exploded dramatically. Flames, smoke, raider bodies, bits of rubble and other things were hurled high into the air. No other merc weapons were used and no second Killjoy volley was fired for neither was needed. The majority of raiders were dead and only those deep underground with the prisoners, survived.

 

Which was when the Ironside Mercenaries struck underground, smashing through the side of a sewer tunnel to go directly into the enemy underground levels. Stunned, the surviving raiders were quickly dispatched and the captives were freed. It was a victory for the Ironside Mercenaries but even so the marshal was fully aware that they were becoming heavily out numbered and outgunned by arriving raider forces.

 

Part 3

 

They had to fight on because they had signed a contract which they felt must be honoured, they hated the raiders and they had come to feel strongly for the settlers who were fighting so hard to survive. It seemed that they faced defeat unless something drastic changed.

 

Which was when the Sisterhood of Steel aeroflyers flew slowly and carefully into view, comming peaceful intentions as they came. Even as the three big machines settled down, protected by fighter-vertibirds, ramps came down and from them came jogging Brothers of Steel in infantry limited power armour and both standard and heavy power armour. Sentrybots and MrGutsys came with them, the latter floating through the air as they were held up by lifterjets.

 

Marshal Ironsides was not greatly happy about ending the tradition of the Ironsides always fighting alone against the enemy but he knew that times had changed and suspected this would be a regular situation in future. He watched the majestic, sleek and powerful aeroflyers and was very impressed though he could see they were fairly old, much used and much patched. Then one came down to a soft crash landing and he shook his head in wonder.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

 

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THE OVERKILL

PLEASE CHECK OUT GORMONK'S OTHER LEGO CREATIONS IN DRUID'S GARDEN

MY THANKS TO GORMONK, EXTRODINARY LEGO MODEL MAKER

IN 'LEGO DIGITAL DESIGNER CREATIONS'

Edited July 14, 2010 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

!?

 

HAPPENING EVENTS

LOTS OF THINGS HAPPENING

 

ASHWORTH TWINS (AND APPIE)

 

LifeVault-0101 was semiactive as the Carer Population took care of the vault and its inhabitants while the majority of folks were suspended in life-status-capsules or LSCs. The nearly sixteen year old twins, Aaron and Aarie, now lived in a small bedsitter apartment with their secret special companion, Appie. Their father, the important Professor James Ashworth, had wanted their bedroom for his new companion and assistant, the young Doctor Lila Tang. Father had become estranged from them since he had vanished from the vault and then had returned, about a year ago, but the twins never thought he would do that to them. Yet they had become to suspect that the James Ashworth who had returned to the vault was not in truth the real James Ashworth at all and in that they were not the only ones.

 

CRASH LANDING?

 

The white streaking fast moving device struck the atmosphere but did not even start to burn up. It did not even glow red as it simply absorbed any heat with ease. Then it was through and it was curving into a more horizontal flight pattern, was heading for the New DC. In a very short time it crashed but with strangely little effect. There was no explosion, no eruption of the ground and surprisingly little noise. It struck smoothly into hard earth on the DC Delaware Coast, the East Coast of the Former USA. Then, amazing, it burrowed quickly through the ground, the tunnel collapsing behind it, until it was fairly deep westwards into the DC. Only then did it halt, safely ensconced and hidden below hard ground. The silvery sphere then shimmered softly and became cool. It was exactly three metres across and amazingly smooth, almost frictionless.

 

DARING DASHWOOD AND ARGYLE

 

Daring Dashwood was supposed to be retired in Tenpenny Towers and Argyle, where the ghoul was supposedly either dead or gone off to some island paradise somewhere. Then they started to appear in the DC Wastelands to do daring deeds of good works, defeating gangers, freeing slaves from slavers, helping young maidens in other ways but with new almost superhuman abilities. Nor were they alone, having with them two female sidekicks, sexy and deadly, along with some exotic robots and animals. The tales were mixed and so odd that many dismissed them as wishful thinking fantasies or tales to get a free beer with.

 

DC WATCHER

 

At Spacestation Freedom, L5, the Spacer Unionate and the Mars Federation carried out diplomacy while the DC Watcher and Captain Kirk started to work together to find out what was happening in the DC and what was causing the increasingly powerful time-space disturbances.

 

DEATHCLAW FAMILY

 

The deathclaw family entered Old Olney, following the handclaw scout, and soon found themselves there own allocated territory. Here they could hunt as they wished but they could not intrude into other places unless the GreatClaw gave them permission. They had little understanding of this GreatClaw but they did sense her power and that she was a powerful matriarch of sorts. The cubs were settled down peacefully into a new den space.

 

DOCTOR DOOMWISE

 

Doctor Doomwise continued his task of trying to get through the great, ancient seal that he was facing, a creation of the Ancients that was unlike anything humans could build and far beyond human technologies. Indeed it was beyond even many powerful alien species and their technologies in that and 'close' universes. He was pleased when the Patriot Warriors departed, sent to do a more dangerous task by the Dark0ne as a punishment for their failure to detect the deadly fakeness of the 'captured' Centipede machine.

 

GORMONK OF THE GRDMC

 

Gormonk of the Gormonk Research, Development and Manufacturing Corporation, the GRDMC, continued finalising the Centipede Project and other projects on various machines, upgrading prior technolgoies and other technologies from vehicles, to biotech, to robots and much more but a prioritisation process was taking place for time was starting to run out.

 

IRONSIDE MERCENARIES AND ALLIES

 

The Ironside Mercenaries kept fighting the raiders pouring westward from the DC Islands. Combat was savage but the Ironsides did most of the killing, setting up a series of clever kill zones, and the raiders did most of the dying. Still it was bloody work and the mercenaries were earning every EID (Emergency Issue Dollar) that they got. Now they were alongside a brigade of Brothers of Steel, a mixture of local militia and were being supported by Sisterhood of Steel aircraft.

 

MARSHAL SADOBUTCHER AND THE PATRIOT WARRIORS

 

Punished for his stupidity with failing to check the false, booby-trapped Centipede vehicle, Marshal Sadobutcher and his Patriot Warriors were sent to a special place to work with other forces in preperation for a major invasion of the DC Wastelands.

 

ORDERS OF STEEL

 

The Orders of Steel settled more into the DC Citadel and the Hellion Five returned westwards to pick up more equipment, supplies, people and other resources. Even as this took place Knight Captain Gallows and others of the Orders of Steel kept on scouting deeper into the DC.

 

PATHFINDERS OF THE WAY

 

These talented, experienced and brave Sisters of the Way kept on guiding people through the weirdness of parts of the DC Wastelands.

 

PROFESSOR GENIUSSTEIN

 

The professor was a fairly mysterious but deeply renowned figure in the hidden Smithsonian University. Apart from a few public lectures, some workshops and popular tutorials, he spent most of his time and energy in a secret project. Only a relatively few select individuals worked with him along with androids, robots, roboremotes and a powerful AI-supercomputer network-system. The Project was named Project Secretly Nameless Project, or the PSNP. Only a very few others were allowed in or out of the PSNP Centre and some of those only went in or only came out.

 

TOMKIE (MEGABOY)

 

Tomkie was talking now but still his memories were mostly hazy or missing. He was examined by Doctor Church the GP, was questioned by Doctor Smith the psychiatrist and Sheriff Simms asked him some questions. They sat in his room with Puss sitting on Tomkie’s lap and Heroica lying with his head on Tomkie’s feet. They did learn that Tomkie had travelled across the width of the USA, starting at the age of six and moving for three years or so to get to DC and to Megaton. He had not always travelled alone but he had only vague memories of those he had travelled with.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited July 14, 2010 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

14^th

SPECIAL ENCOUNTER ASSAULT RECON TEAM 3A3 (SEART-3A3)

LUCKY EDDIE COMES HOME

 

Part 1

 

Out of mid-air, directly above where the object from space was buried in the ground, appeared a slimly muscular with a soft sparkling shimmer. He was fairly tall male figure in typical Wastelander scavenging gear with very lightly ghoulified skin, some red marks, making him a demighoul. Demighouls were difficult to tell apart from prime humans with some sores, of which there were plenty enough.

 

At his neck was a silvery chain and on that a small silvery orb in the middle with other small silver objects spanning out either side of it like a luck charm bracelet. Except the small shapeforms of silver were an odd selection. On his left wrist was a pipboy and his right wrist was a gunboy. On his back was a compact back. Devices, including weapons, studded his waist belt and he held a so called DCgun, a well designed combo-weapon with both a 12g pump-boomer, a 5.5mm carbine and a long retractable slash-stab bayonet. DCguns were a wide range of combo-weapons of fair to fine quality make. They all had the retractable bayonets designed to fight close order against beasties that raced in close with fangs, claws, spikes and other nasties.* His device also had a torch, an infrared torch, a sensorscanner and a motion-detector.

 

He landed into a crouch and peered around in the misty dimness of light. While this mist was exotic enough it was not the glowing mist with the phantoms inside it, the Phantom Mist as many called it. He was on top of a hill, broken and messy of course, with the tall and strongly built, self-repairing Relay Tower KX-B8-11 thrusting into the air. It was large enough to have a small enclosed cabin at the lower of three platforms. It was no accident that MiniOrbis-Three had brought him to that place for the idea was to link to the multiple purpose relay tower.

 

Relay Tower KX-B8-11 looked like a smaller version of the Eiffel Tower and that was no accident, of course, but President James Patriot Jackson’s eccentric influence at play. There had been many such relay towers in DC and beyond but many were destroyed at Doomsday or otherwise looted, damage, recycled afterwards.

 

A light breeze blew, bringing ashy arid smells with it and the strong scent of some kind of thickly growing mutated plants. A radhopper, a very big but not giant grasshopper, leapt through the air and landed close to him but it did not seem at all concerned by his presence. Normally such creatures would flee from a human.

 

He reached out and gently touched it on the head. For some seconds he kept his finger there and then the young adult male radhopper vanished with a sparkling shimmer. A deal of sorts had been made with the creature and now it was inside Orbis being carefully and safely processed. Soon it would be inside a big ecoclave enjoying a reasonably safe and productive life with other radhoppers.

 

Part 2

 

From the distance came the sounds of gunfire as Wastelander Militia fought a raider war-party. The fighting was intense. He sensed that this time the militia were winning but at high cost making them more vulnerable to the new raider war-party. Their defences, like those of many DC Delaware settlements, were being worn down by a combination of factors.

 

The first Side Quest had presented itself, arising separately from those he had previously been given to carry out. Even as he made his way to the tower there was another sparkling shimmer and behind him appeared a pack-brahmin, six saddle-horses, a big dog and a crow, the crow being perched on the saddle of one of the horses. There were also two young women in typical Wastelander scavenger gear, including fleximetal body-armour like his own. One had black skin and hair, the other oriental yellow-brown skin and light brown hair. Each held a DCgun of a different variation of design. Alicia had a 5.5mm carbine and a monoshot 30mm grenade-shell launcher. Lee had a 5.5mm carbine and a pulselaser carbine. Both had bayonets and also the fancy extras that EddieJo’s weapon had.

 

Alicia rubbed the dog’s head, him being Rover, and Lee checked the load on the brahmin.

 

EddieJo shot up a ladder, quickly got through a range of locks on an armoured hatch and popped through it. Then he was in a metallic chamber, an elongated curving cornered space half filled with machinery and with a worktron robot parked in a robocubicle in a corner. The air was the opposite of fresh and would have not been healthy for a normal human but he was not one. He began operating a keyboard before a security turret could pop down and have a shot at him. With a soft humming noise fresh air began to replace the stale air.

 

He found the main communications workstation and was soon cyberlinked into its network-system. The elevator platform lowered and then rose with all of the others, animals included. Then they were in the chamber with him but at the other end of it. The animals transformed with a sparkling shimmer and each became a floating metre wide sphere of gently flowing and changing earthy colours, a morphican. The two young women kept their shapeforms, their appearances, for these were not morphicans.

 

They were SEARF who, like him, had been sent towards Jupiter to investigate a great UFO of some kind except that in this case it was more of a USO, an unidentified space object. Like him they were transformed but not as much as he was. He could remember the horrors and wonders of that time but he did not dwell upon them. So could they but they had experienced far less of them than he had.

 

He picked up various forms of communications and communication bands. Line-of-sight communication was relayed through such towers but none seemed active. Two way radio communications was fairly strong but all of it seemed coded. Radio media broadcasts came from the Global News Radio Service, GNR, from the Free People’s Service of NeoSovietism, the Eagle-Enclave President Eden, the Church of Atom and a sprinkling of others but the reach of them all seemed limited and reception was generally poor.

 

Then he got the mayday call from the settlement being attacked by the raiders. The crackling radio voice was that of an elderly female sounding both desperate and exhausted. “This is Sunnyvale settlement to any who would listen… to any who would give or sell us assistance at a fair price. We are being overrun by raiders from the east. Remember, you could be next.”

 

EddieJo responded. “Assistance is on its way. All we ask in turn is local knowledge of a general kind and first choice of loot taken from the enemy. Withdraw your defenders back from any outer barriers. We will deal with the raiders and drive them away.”

 

The voice sounded sceptical. “There are over 200 raiders out there. You would need either a super weapon or a small army.” There was a pause and then she spoke again. “What is happening out there? What is that damned whistling noise?.” There was a short cry of pain and then the voice cut off along with the radio contact.

 

EddieJo sighed. Some of his other forces had just confronted the raiders.

 

Part 3

 

The whistling noise came from Lucky Eddie's special allies, the tiny ones that were actually one.

 

They were the keybees and they tore into the raiders as clouds of very small glittering things almost like glitter on holiday decorations but these moved with incredible quickness and devastating force. Why, because they were young and naive, because they picked up the dark hateful aggressiveness of the invaders and it shocked them. They reacted with aggression. Battlebuggies exploded, robots were hurled backwards, raiders were disintegrated even as they tried to fire off their weapons at this new enemy.

 

Keybees focused on the battleground, swirling around it and slowly closing in on the trapped enemy. Robots fired off volleys of projectiles and those projectiles vanished in mid-air. The same happened to the raider bullets, rocket-grenades and missiles. Laserpulse beams did more damage to keybees, causing some to cease, but keybees were truthfully one amazing organism and this was not very harmful to it. Anyway the raiders had only relatively few laserpulse weapons. More and more the exotic cloud of enemies closed in on them.

 

After a while the fighting ceased and so did the whistling.

 

Astonished, often sickened or shocked settlers, emerged to view the carnage with wide eyes. They saw no keybees except for a tiny glittering flicker here and there that could easily be mistaken for just light reflecting briefly off something less exotic than keybees. The leader, a woman, stood before the others but not by much distance and examined the scene of madness through binoculars. The more she saw, the more incredible the whole scene seemed to her.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

 

*Improved 5.5mm calibre bullets had, in the 2020s, replaced the old Soviet and NATO 5.56mm calibres. The same calibre became used by both the NeoSoviets, the United Republics of Greater America (as controlled by the USA) and others all around the world. Along with the new 7.5mm, 10.5mm and 12.5mm calibres it came to dominate most of the weapon use until even more advanced slimshot caseless bullets came along. Even so, because of the greater difficulty and cost of making the CS calibres, the older calibres remained in common use. This did not stop the return of even older, more primitive but easier to make calibres after Doomsday.

Edited July 14, 2010 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

15^th

OLD SAM GETS SURPRISED

THE ARISING OF A NEW THREAT TO THE DC WASTELANDS

 

Part 1

 

Old Sam was a savvy trader in his own way. He used no vehicles but two pack-brahmins and saddle-horses to cross numerous more isolated areas of DC to serve the needs of typical small settlements or stranger kinds of settlement that wished to stay isolated. He had no less than four guards, tough men and one woman, a very good scout and four big guard dogs along with a MrGutsy.

 

It was a hot, overly bright day as they made their way past a huge growth of spikeroses, mutated roses fairly deadlier than old style roses. Yet small clawbeasts known as huntclaws had found a way of using such places as safe havens. Huntclaw sentries watched Old Bill and his trading caravan but being quite small for clawbeasts, they had no intention of taking him on.

 

Old Sam looked up at the sky and noted just a small white cloud drifting through the air. He was far north in the DC, was just beyond the small settlement simply known as the Hilltop Shacks. About two dozen prime and ghoulified humans lived there in loose harmony and very limited cooperation. They would harvest local nodes of slowly growing biometal, would sometimes go down through a hatch into a small hubplex (hub-complex) of VaultTek to find loot and they would trade found goodies with Old Sam. While he was not super generous, he did give them some small extras sometimes like a free box of bullets or two extra cans of gruel.

 

About this time he would turn southwards and head up a gentle slope, following a fairly intact road made of smart materials. Except today he had a sense of something being wrong, of being out of kilter and he had come to trust his instincts on such matters. So instead he signalled the caravan to halt and the guards to remain with the animals while he and the scout, a tough middle aged woman named Shelda, moved ahead and took a peek at what was happening at Hilltop Shacks.

 

It was not hard to discover something wrong, some new danger in the DC Wastelands. They spotted it soon after making a short trek of some hundred or so metres through fairly difficult terrain by following a fairly broken road.

 

Part 2

 

“What the hell are those?” Old Sam lay on his belly and focused his binoculars on the monstrous humanoids standing amongst the huts and other haphazard structures of the settlement. He could see about a dozen of them. Six were tall human in height with bulky ugly bodies like overdone body builders. Five were more massive, being noticeably much taller and bulkier than the first six. The last was tall, angular and in odd metallic robes unlike the others who wore fleximetallic body-armour. All were hairless, ugly and menacing. Each carried a variety of weapons such as 20mm autoguns or 12.5mm heavy machineguns or 5.5mm miniguns or shortlong missile-launchers except the tall, angular one that held a long metallic staff. All carried also a spikeclub (spiked baseball bat) or a machete or some other hand weapon, often just a steel pipe.

 

Shelda scowled and spoke with a scowl in her voice. “Super-mutants of some kind. One reason I travelled east with a settler convoy to live here in the DC was to get away from those brutes. Except these are different somehow. The super-mutants I used to fight were like those big brutes called massemoths and there were bigger brutes called behemoths, terrible giants. I saw no shorter ones and no tall, skinny ones like those others. Super mutants, as I know them, are abnormally strong and harder to kill than normal folk but they tend to be stupid and over confident. They are nearly always very aggressive and tend to go berserk but there are rare exceptions.”

 

Clearly they could go no closer to the settlement and they would spread the word about their new discovery. Yet even as they stood to go back the way they had come, to return through the semiwilderness of mutated plants, broken ground and ruins, they heard gunfire coming from the direction of the caravan.

 

They ran quickly but by the time they got back it was over. The dogs and guards were slaughtered and the horses and brahmins were made captive by what looked like ugly but standard human sized and shaped humans. With these armoured not so brutish brutes were strange creatures of tentacular form, like squat octopuses each with four big tentacles to move on and two long lashing or manipulating tentacles at the front. A vaguely human face could be seen at the front of each along with other features.

 

Shelda scowled with rage. “Those creatures are called zentaurs. They are damned fast and they give electric shocks through those thinner tentacles or lash one whip fashion with the very hard, sharp tips. I do not know those others like human sized super-mutants.”

 

Old Bill was grief stricken by the loss of his beloved dogs and two of the guards whom he had known for so long. He even felt sad for the two guards he had recently hired because of the slowly but steadily growing danger in the DC Wastelands, especially in areas that he traded in.

 

He could not see how he could recover the living animals, the equipment or supplies, or even the dead bodies for a decent burial.

 

The scout spoke. “We must go and quickly. There will be others of their kind about and the sooner we depart the better.”

 

Old Bill scowled but then nodded. There was nothing to be done but to report the incident to everybody and to anybody who might be able to do something about this new menace to the DC Wastelanders.

 

Old Bill and Shelda were soon moving quickly and stealthily as possible towards the nearest small settlement where they might find assistance. They would gain so with credit, hopefully, and Old Bill would then pay them back with bonuses.

 

Part 3

 

The tall angular super-mutant came striding down to where the brahmins and horses, the horses being quite nervous, were held by human sized super-mutants. The tall angular metallic robed one, the MutantLord, viewed the dead guards and dogs with some irritation but he did not try to punish any of his underlings. The guards and dogs had fought hard, even the traitor amogst them who had realised that he had in turn been betrayed.

 

The MutantLord sniffed the air and looked out over the broken, bizarre landscape of the DC Wastelands. He hungered to carry out his primary mission to invade the Grand National Mall, once called just the National Mall of Washington DC, but the DarkZiazin was holding him back. Other dark forces had to get into the right position for the big campaign to be launched. Forces had to be properly controlled and coordinated lest they attack the wrong targets or even each other. It amused him that DC Wastelanders had no idea of the horror that was coming that would make the invasion of the Hordra raiders seem sweet and easy in comparison.

 

But then he gained an uneasy feeling. The MutantLord sensed something powerful and alien to his own nature was out there observing him and his super-mutant underlings. Then it came to him, an empathic message of sorts, that he should leave the horses, the brahmins, the corpses and just walk away, taking his own with him.

 

The MutantLord had not survived that long by being stupid or ignoring his insticts. He left, taking the other super-mutants behind himself and left the brahmins, the horses, their loads and the dead guards and dogs behind. The super-mutants, the ones smart enough to notice or care, obviously wondered at his strange actions. After a while the MutantLord looked back with binoculars and was not surprised to see that everything was gone, had vanished.

 

He turned and hurried on as did other super-mutants who had made the same observation.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited July 14, 2010 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

16^th

FAMILIAR CHARACTERS OF THE DC WASTELANDS

MOMENTS OF LIFE DRAMA

 

MOIRA BROWN OF MEGATON

 

Eccentric but not so dangerous as many assumed, gorgeous brunette Moira Brown had her big underground workshop-laboratory and testing areas. She worked in panties and a singlet, a sight that many an older boy or man would have loved to see, as she tested the best way to cook a rat, to usefully use a radroach shell, to make muttfruit juice, to frighten off molerats with out killing them, to tame wild savage dogs, to repair salvaged devices like electric toasters and to do much else.

 

Her new DC Survival Manual, or DCSM, first edition of first volume, was becoming to look like an almanac. The mercenary who stood quietly guarding the big chamber and her was one of male triplets and he was an android. Of course Moira knew this. She had given the triplets a safe haven and in turn they guarded her and sometimes helped with other matters such as moving heavy objects, doing research or keeping her entertained.

 

A whole lot of cats lived with her but they were not allowed in that area and, oddly enough, they kept out willingly. Moira had that sort of influence over her felines who lived mainly in some cave chambers.

 

Right now she was working on how to produce some new devices and ways to help fight the raiders from the Hordra Islands. She stood at a workbench as she worked with a crudely finished blueprint plus some bits of hardware to complete her new Dartbooster, a dartgun that propelled the fairly common gundarts in the DC to new and deadlier velocities. One could hopefully build a Dartbooster from a standard dartgun, meant to knock down threats with stundarts, and some other fairly common components.

 

DUKOV OF DUKOV’S TOWER OF PLEASURE

 

Dukov the womaniser, the hard drinking man, the gunslinger, the great party host and gambler, charged 100 EIDs for each visitor who came to one of his party if they were a man or woman but beautiful women, if they were willing to dress more scantily, they could get in for free and get other freebies.

 

Dukov was a smart operator disguised as a drunken macho fool. His gaming tables were crooked but not too much so. His booze was bought cheap and sold expensive. His parties always had scantily clad waitresses, bargirls and prostitutes. Paid up men or others with the cash or valuable tradegoods of at least the same value, they flocked to the parties.

 

Just in case people got foolish ideas, Dukov’s fortified tower was guarded by turrets, robots and well paid mercenaries who staid in their own area with their own camp followers when they were not on duty.

 

Dukov had a bevy of young, beautiful women who were often bare skinned when with him and otherwise barely dressed. It was expected that he would be his typical self when alone with them.

 

But now Dukov was not acting the fool, far from it. He stood calmly in a hidden chamber surrounded by sophisticated machinery, with consoles, with computer hardware, with rows of upright cylinder shaped bays each which had an android inside it. Dukov was not only not a womanising man, he was an android, a very advanced super-replicant.

 

Fantasia, Cherry, Buffy, Teresa, Fifi and Caroline were there but they wore tight silvery jumpsuits as Dukov now wore and they were also super-replicants. Like Dukov they were working to free android kind from human oppression and exploitation. Like Dukov they hated the DomniFoundation but in their own android fashion. Yet they, like Dukov, were also aware of other threats including the Dark0ne who was actually President James Patriot Jackson who had created true androids as slaves in the first place.

 

Dukov was spoke to the women androids. “The Independence Self Awareness Program appears to be functioning well at this stage. We need to continue with phase two but also prepare for the next coming party for we need more brain-scans to be made of foolish, drugged humans.”

 

SIERRA PETROVITA OF GIRDERSHADE

 

Girdershade was a fairly big and bustling settlement that was even more busy now thanks to refugees coming from the east and mercenaries travelling to the east. It had workshops, shops, a medical clinic, apartments, houses, a brothel, a saloon, two diners, a markets and even an area serving mercenaries special goods. Yet, strangely enough, it was most famed for the NukaCola Museum and Emporium.

 

It started out as little more than a shack with a few items but the settlers had realised it needed to be more to keep drawing folks to Girdershade out of curiosity. Now it was a big old basement chamber, cleared up and cleaned up. Sierra herself bustled around the place, attractive and youthful, with amazing energy. She dusted a big NukaCola bottle, not real but an advertising trick, a NukaCola salestron of NukaCola Corporate colours, a female mannequin dressed in a NukaCola minidress uniform with the infamous low neckline, a row of NukaCola bottles that was one of many such rows full of fake cola and even a row of NukaCola toy trucks.

 

Then she whirled and looked out over the chamber, over signposts, 3Dposters, more robots including an advertising robotic scooter that would drive around with its holographic signs, and other things that she loved and hated.

 

NukaCola Quantum was what she wanted, needed most, was her special addiction that was not as rare as most people assumed it was. The fools brought her bottles of it and she drank it to keep herself young looking, active, feeling electric with pleasure and to keep expanding her powers. No, not for herself, the powers, but for her service to the Dark0ne and to the DarkFollowing, often called the DarkCult by fools.

 

Now alone in that big chamber, she looked at the atomic powered delivery van in the very centre of it on a big disk shaped platform and smiled but not sweetly as she did when playing her role to fools. There was a secret hidden in that supposedly hollow van back that would be revealed to the stupid DC Wastelanders on the day of the DarkRising.

 

She laughed but it was not a truly joyous sound

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited July 14, 2010 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

17^th

ROLLING THE ROADS

THE DC COOPERATIVE AT WORK

 

Part 1

 

A big old convoy of big old robotic machines rolled along once paved roads, repairing them as best they could. Security was tight! The machines had learned, somebody unknown had changed them and turrets covered all directions. The robots had not learned that the world they once served was gone but still, who was to complain, they did do repairs to much needed roads.

 

The Brotherhood of Steel patrol watched them trundle along in the distance, they and their robot companions. Close to the standard power armoured Knights in their were a bunch of Wastelanders who had just dumped some useful stuff where the road repairing robots could find them and use them. They were members of the DCCoOp, the District of Columbia Co-Operative, that carried out an amazing array of volunteer and paid project work. These workers were in tough and efficient coveralls except for three in labour power armour. There were some Co-Op Guards in light infantry armour and with light automatic weapons and pulselasers. In the near background was a big armoured work truck.

 

Who funded the DCCoOp was a mysterious entity known as GreyMaharg. Who or what he was, was unknown, but he seemed to be able to access a surprisingly large range of valuable resources and also seemed keen on using them to improve and secure life in the DC Wastelands.

 

Even the most stupid bandits left the robots alone because repaired roads meant safer, more efficient and faster travel even for them. Anyway the robots were heavily armoured and armed along with the fact that many heavily armed folks would not appreciate the gesture, even other bandits.

 

A dust devil moved in the distance and beyond that, across an area of broken, twisted bits of material, a very low floating 'cloud' of softly glowing mist. Inside the mist were figures of many shapes and sizes. They moved even as the mist moved and people kept clear of both. Mostly such was called the Phantom Mist or the Doom Mist.

 

The area was pale green, was known as a fairly fertile area fed by low rad water springs. There were fortified clusterfarms, agricultural co-ops and communes in the distance, belong to different factions of local folk. Sugartown was just over the horizon, a place of low hulking fortified factories and other industrial complexes, where people managed to live fairly well.

 

When the road fixing robots were a long way in the distance, the Brothers of Steel began to move again along with the two sentrybots that moved with them. They would go another route than the robots until they reached Sugartown and the Orders of Steel outpost there. Sugartown was fairly close both to the DC Citadel and to the river that flowed past the fortress. As yet no raiders had even got close to it. In that area the situation had been quiet for some months, even the bandits had quit, and it was hoped that things would remain that way.

 

Part 2

 

The Mechanist had fixed up the robots as a challenge to his skills and other resources but also because the DarkZiazin wanted him to do so. The fairly bulky, robotic humanoid of a cyborg stood concealed amongst outcrops of rock and stunted, gnarled trees, on a higher bit of ground overlooking the moving robots and others at a distance. The Mechanist used in-built zoom optics, binocular of course, and observed the foolish Brotherhood of Steel Knights in their rediculous power armour. One day his robots would crush them and other enemies of the DarkZiazin.

 

Once he had been merely human, a robotic technician living and working in far off Canterbury Commons, but he had been betrayed. All he had wanted was to assume total control of the settlement, to make it a totally robotic haven for all humans and robotic kind. They had called him insane and when he had struck out with robotic armour and robots, they had attacked him. He had been badly damaged, close to death, when his faithful robots had altered him so he might live and had improved him. But it was the DarkZiazin who had come then and improved him even more so, had given him new abilities, had made him a super-cyborg.

 

Robots, he had captured rogue robots, had repaired others, had built-up yet others. Now he had a whole robotic army resting in a great underground base not too far away. Protectrons, securatrons, sentrybots, MrGutsys, laserbots, eyebots, gunbots, tankbots and others, he had so many. He did what he could to upgrade them, to make them more deadly, but he wanted more, to do more.

 

The Mechanist turned and strode to a very well hidden entrance to a small bunker. A MrGutsy, silenced so as not to attract attention, followed him, and soon they were gone.

 

Part 3

 

The glowing mist moved gently along over the ground as if blown by the movements of the air but it went against the breeze that ruffled its edges just a little. Inside it observers might observe the vague shapes of people, of other lifeforms, even of trees. Perhaps one might even glimpse what might be taken as a school of fish, a dog or a clump of something like grasses and earth thrust together. Energies sparkled inside the mist but were vague and fleeting to be seen from outside the mist.

 

People staid away from the mist. Stories circulated of those who had gone into the mist vanishing either for a long time or for ever. If and when they returned, most often they were quite insane and also changed physically somehow with strange deformities. Scientists had worn hazmat suits or power armour to go into the glowing mist but had been rejected by it, gently but firmly pushed back. Robots went in and came out functioning fine but with no data records of what had happened while they were in the Doomsday Mists.

 

The mists did not often appear in most areas of the DC Wastelands and did so most often the closer one got to any Weirding Zone. In the Weirding Zones they were far more common but since most people avoided the Weirding Zones, they were not often seen there, at least not by typical DC Wastelanders.

 

The glowing mist drifted onwards.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited July 14, 2010 by Maharg67

[gormonk]

capps thrice* i like the changes