War of Realities (Redone and Improved)

[Fifoo]

Thanks for sharing a so rich and well made story Maharg67, looks like I'm falling in a Quentin Tarantino's incredible Pulp Fiction movie, and I loved your references about GreyMaharg and Dark0ne :laugh:

 

Good improvement for the text trim size too :thumbsup:

[Maharg67]

Thank you, Fifoo. It is positive feedback from yourself and others that has helped to motivate me to keep going and to improve my writing as much as possible.

 

46^th

BY MISTAKE?

A TRIP TO A MAGICAL PARADISE, NOT!

 

PART 1

 

The three feral ghouls, not to be mistaken for almost mindless zhouls, but very wild and primitive, were running from slavers out from Paradise Falls. They ran quickly as they could along the floors of broken gullies, clambered over rocky outcrops while staying as hidden as possible and waded waist deep through pools of muddy water. They clutched crude weapons of steel pipes but even they knew they had no chance against armoured, armed slavers with big steel electric cattleprods. They clambered over the wreckage of a vertibird and a heap of other bits wreathed in mutated plant life. Leatherskin frogs hopped quickly out of their way, some being bigger than the hands of the runners.

 

Streaks of lightening flashed across the sky and were soon followed by thunder.

 

It was a pale dull daytime with dark clouds swirling overhead. The area had suddenly gone very cold and it could even hail or snow it being an area on the fringes of a Weirding Zone. Rows of barbed wire and razor wire were relics of a big battle in the American Revolution against the madness of President James Patriot Jackson when a large taskforce of US GIs, National Guardsmen and Marines had invaded the Patriot DC only to find themselves confronting the elite Patriot Guard forces. The Guardsmen and Marines had lost but in the process had done surprisingly lots of damage against their supposedly undefeatable foe. The Patriot Guards were forced into a humiliating defeat, losing the very territory they had just won. In gratitude the president had strangled the commanding general to death with his own monstrous hands.

 

Then the feral ghouls were clambering down into a great pit full of glowing mist but a mist unlike that of the Doomsday Mist. Then they were stumbling, were crying out, as somehow they were sinking into what felt like nothingness.

 

PART 2

 

They fell lightly into a great bowl of clear, clean, softly bubbling lukewarm water. They lay there as it bubbled against them and around them, glowing softly with rainbow lights that seemed to emanate from the water itself.

 

When they emerged from it, they were naked and they were quite pristine human appearing. They had vague memories of their preghoul and ghoulish existence but they felt at peace in that they metallic rock cavern of many dull, moderately dark colours. It stretched out into the distance.

 

There was a peaceful group to meet them being other beautiful, youthful looking humans, some newish looking strange robots of various kinds and other creatures all with fixed smiles on their faces. Those who needed clothes wore odd metallic knee length robes, when they had knees, of gold, silver or copper colouring. A friendly chimpnoid helped them one by one out of the pool, he wearing a copper coloured robe.

 

Then the greeters began to sing in a strange sing song lyrical language known by ancient tribes as the Language of the Birds. “Oh he loves you, the Prophet James Patriot Jackson, oh welcome to his heavenly abode between the worlds. Oh he welcomes you who will give your whole to him with out question for you are but expendable before his glorious perfection.”

 

The three began to note how the eyes of the greeters were oddly glazed as if drugged or hypnotised or both. The former ghouls now looked around in confusion. They saw that moulded in the walls of the great chamber were curved cornered cube shaped alcoves and in them were odd selections of items. Some were more familiar than others. Some were down right weird. Many were too far in the distance, too small, or too unknown to be identified. Each alcove was full of glowing mist of the same appearance as that which they had fallen into as feral ghouls.

 

Now the three could sense the strange background but all present presence of something unnatural, evil, of false goodness. Almost as one they turned and fled together across the hard metallic rock floor. But one by one they screamed out in pain as they were surrounded by red flickering fields of energy, and fell helplessly to the floor where they writhed until they became semiconscious. They stood up and now they also had the vapid smiling expressions of the others.

 

PART 3

 

The great labyrinth of metallic stone was an ancient transdimensional prison designed and built to contain great and powerful evil of varied kinds. For an incredibly long time this place, created by the living-gods and living-goddesses, with the help of the Centro, and guided by the Lords and Ladies of the Light, stood firm. The entrapped evil could not make contact with each other, could not truly use their powers, but since Doomsday the prison has become unstable.

 

Eaters'O'Eavil have escaped. Once they were created to bring goodness to the Multiverse, the universe of universes, but they were created by an insane fool known as the Mad Saint of Eternity. The insane fool long ago sought redemption and gained forgiveness, reformation and became the prison guard of his own creations. Now he, the Saint Guardian, is trapped in the labyrinth that has become so twisted it has turned against him.

 

Now there is this evil, this red glowing energies of fanatical madness, that has come to worship the DarkZiazin as it once worshipped another force that tried to destroy the Multiverse. This red energy was the evil of unthinking followers embodied into a real force. It had many victims and they doid what it bid as it waited for the DarkZiazin to instruct it in what to do next. The victims, they are the Beautiful Ones, the tainted immortals who created their distorted form of longivity through terrible crimes against others. The Beautiful Ones, they screamed now as they had lost control of their actions to the red energies.

 

Evil against evil!

 

But now the ghouls were victims and they did not deserve this fate. The strange robots were also victims as were other creatures there.

 

PART 4

 

There was a great flash of blinding white light that filled the great chamber. With a terrible agonising scream of inhuman form, the red energies were gone for ever. The Beautiful Ones perished, burned away instantly and were gone.

 

The shocked and puzzled ghouls, now all healthy and human like, being humans now, looked around and saw a tall, elegantly beautiful woman in silken translucent robes down to her knees and velvety saffron coloured skin and darker saffron coloured hair. The robots were there and there was something very unrobotic about them as they started to chat with each other. There were other creatures like elves, centaurs, two headed red scaled humanoids, bloated fish that swam through the air as normal fish swam through water and others.

 

The former ghouls felt right at home as the Unity emerged amongst the group.

 

The tall, elegantly beautiful woman smiled and then she vanished with a sparkling shimmer. Her name was SaffronaMaharg and she was deeply concerned for some of the Beautiful Ones had already escaped from the ancient prison as had some of the red energies. Now she had to track them and deal with them before they could do any real harm.

 

PART 5

 

As for the former ghouls and the others, now of the Unity, they gathered what resources that they could from that place and when a portal opened to take them to OrbisSanctuary, they gladly took it. There turned out to be hundreds of others also for they had falledn through gaps, cracks and worn thin places in the transdimensional prison walls and had come from many world. Some dwelt in water or in other kinds of atmosphere and they went through their own portals, many to their own versions of OrbisSanctuary such as the methane breathers to theirs.

 

After they had gone, something flickered across the great chamber, something fast and deadly, zigzagging, that the living-goddess SaffronaMaharg had not detected. It was morgue light, it was terrible, it was a flickering touch of undeath and it was the same force that had created the undeathobs in the Jagged Crater in which Megaton was situated.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited July 14, 2010 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

47^th

MANY VENTURES, ADVENTURES

 

GEORGE LICOLN DIVING DOWN TO THE FLOOR OF THE PONTOMAC

 

The old submarine was much enhanced, upgraded, repaired and it worked well. Once it had been used by government workers to inspect pipes and other facilities on the floor of the river. Now it was armed, armoured and was surrounded by subbots, relatively small submarine robots, scouting for danger and keeping guard on the submarine.

 

Many said that George Lincoln looked like a younger, more muscular version of Abraham Washington himself and to a great extent it was true. George Lincoln wore assault power armour and sat in a special secure chair close to those of the pilot, co-pilot, navigator and com-operator. They were in the pilot cabin of the submarine behind an armoured transparent dome that could be covered in a irising armour covering in a short time.

 

In the mass of rubbish, the sunken vessels, the great forests of mutated water plants and river coral, the searchers needed to find an airlock entrance down into the levels below. Such had been built by the TekCorps who had transformed the DC according to the great plan of President James Patriot Jackson. Nobody was sure why but this was true for many of the aspects of the Patriot DC as designed by the Mad President.

 

A huge direshark swam lazily past the nose of the submarine, a monster with a sleek back flowing fin and great, black eyes.

 

AMELIA SKYHEART SCOUTING THE SKIES

 

Just because the raiders invasion had failed and they were dead, captured, scattered or fled back to the islands, did not mean that Amelia Skyheart of the Sisterhood of Steel had ceased to have work to do. In her stealth scoutplane she flew gracefully through the skies over the DC Wastelands, carefully avoiding the weirding zones where aircraft had a bad habit of vanishing, and observing what was going on down there.

 

She flew towards the Union of Columbia Islands and was welcome. She even landed briefly and was able to meet with some local government and military reps. But other islands were either too primitive to be of use or were aggressive. Crosswayne, of the Orthodoxic Church of Atom, fired missiles at her just enough to turn her away but the Clansfolk welcomed her but only to a fringe island, a smaller one. They would not let her fly over their main islands. Still, it was a start. She was not foolish enough to go too close to the DomniCommonwealth or the Patriot Republic or the NeoSoviet island that was wrapped in a weirding zone that only the NeoSoviets knew how to navigate through to their homeland that was surrounded by the weirding zone but was not inside it.

 

ANTAGONIZER

 

The strange baby girl met the antnoids, ant humanoids of strange blendings of human and ant plus some other elements. At first they tried vainly to control her but very soon they were under her sway but she let them mostly do as they wished to do. Queen, princesses, drones, servitors, guards, soldiers and specialists of various kinds were castes and subcastes amongst the antnoids. They were fairly small in numbers but now the presence of the Antagonizer, the baby, pushed them into a surge of reproductive activity, a laying of many eggs.

 

Antnoids and spitter-ants were only her first set of followers to fall under her sway. She reached out and drew in other spitter-ant nests to her control but also a nest of fire-ants and a nest of spider-ants, weird eight legged variants of giant-ants that were really a new species, who span webs and spat sticky webbing. But this was only her start.

 

DEATHCLAW FAMILY

Life was normal enough for the deathclaw family as it began a process of forming a true deathclaw pack with other deathclaws. The bond with the handclaw keepers was becoming stronger. The handclaws seemed to be growing protective of the deathclaws, to be concerned about something that the deathclaws could not comprehend. Yet the adult deathclaws became more alert in response to this tension and, oddly enough, it strengthened their bond with the handclaws, a bond that went both ways.

 

PATHFINDERS OF THE WAY

These talented, experienced and brave Sisters of the Way kept on guiding people through the Weirding Zones of the DC Wastelands. Yet they were also alert to the new changes happening to the weirding zones. Most were steadily diminishing and a five were growing bigger and stranger, stronger and were gaining more influence on the DC Wastelands around them. Only one, the one on the NeoSoviet Island, was remaining stable and steadily the same size. The Sisterhood of the Pathways had no reason to go there for no people lived there that wanted or needed their services. Anyway both the weirding zone and the NeoSoviets were vey dangerous.

 

Elder Mother Sarren’Wa of the Sisterhood of Pathfinders was now with Elder Owyn Lyons at the DC Citadel.

 

PROFESSOR GENIUSSTEIN AND THE YOUNG MAN STUDENT

The professor continued work on Project was named Project Secretly Nameless Project, or the PSNP. He continued his series of special lectures, often repeating them.

 

The strange young man of a student became settled in with his animal companions and though the student gangs soon came to hate him as he cut down their power, he became popular with many others. He did tricks, he healed, he repaired, he gave away or traded a constant, if small, flow of valuble items. He studied and seemed to gulp down information with amazing speed. He wrote a series of essays, critiques and a big thesis that astonished his lecturers and tutors with their brilliance and deep insights.

 

When he went to the lectures of Professor Geniusstein, the two took note of each other but did not seem to communicate in any way. Except that the professor carefully studied everything the strange young man wrote and the strange young man was one of the handful of people in the university to receive project reports from Professor Geniusstein.

 

SECURITY MERCENARIES

Fairly new, the Security Mercenaries hired out security guards and related security services to settlements, trade convoys and others who could pay. They also provided goods. Yet they began to serve and supply various non profit organizations at reduced fees.

 

Security Mercenaries allowed more civil acitivy, increased expansion of settlements, the opening of new travel routes and made matters more difficult for the slavers, bandits and gangers along with the local raiders who were converting into gangers.

 

The Security Mercenaries freed up other forces, military and paramilitary, to go out into the DC Wastelands and more directly challenge various threats to the DC Wastelanders.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited July 14, 2010 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

48^th

ABRAHAM WASHINGTON

OBSERVING PJPa021

 

PART 1

 

Master Guardian Abraham Washington stood peacefully observing the android in the big museum chamber. He had found a good deal of data in the android PJPa021 that was a copy of President James Patriot Jackson when he was still mostly human. Yet he had found more questions than answers and much of the information presumed prior knowledge for it to make sense. There were also multiple levels of coding and other tricks to deal with.

 

What he did find confirmed much of what he and the other Thirteen Guardians had long believed. President James Patriot Jackson was well and truly an insane monster by the time that Doomsday came along. He and his fanatical followers, his strange devotees and other forces, had lost full control of all but Patriot DC. The Second American Revolution, the first being the War of Independence, was well under way. The NeoSoviets were launching an invasion of the Undersea Citytates of Deeptrolis, Oceanvalis and New Atlantis in the Pacific Ocean. Canada, Mexico and other subjugated nations of the United Republics of Greater America, were rebelling. Strange plagues were sweeping the world, monsters were arising in many places and there were many smaller, scattered wars taking place. Skynet had gone rogue and was cutting off the orbital and other space colonies from the Earth. Other troubles were taking place, too many of them.

 

No longer being truly human, the US President for Life had launched a series of projects to save himself and had tried to regain control of the USA that had broken away from his leadership. Everything he did was heavily tainted with his madness and his otherwise distorted view of reality. Most were doomed to early failure or at least partial failure. His madness further infected and warped the TekCorps, the Patriot Orders and the others that continued to serve him.

 

PART 2

 

PJPa021 was happily examining some 1950s electromechanical toy robots walking in circles on the floor of the DC Children’s Exhibition Chamber. Old Maid Clair was in the background knitting as she listened to children’s stories from a 3Daudio datacube brightly decorated to look like a child’s building block. Comfortably sleeping in her lap was a child, a little girl, who was from the RivetCity Orphanage. Other orphans were busy looking around or were playing with toys allocated for such purposes.

 

There were other PJP-androids out there but they were scattered, often deactivated and the project they had been part of had basically failed before it got going. Or so it seemed. Was it all a cover for something more deadly. One could get very confused and even paranoid trying to work out just what President James Patriot Jackson had been up to. This was especially true because the truth was concealed inside a vast amount of false, partly false and otherwise misleading data. To top it off, most of that data had become lost on or following Doomsday and regaining it was far from easy.

 

The big chamber was made as colourful, as friendly as possible. PJPa021 was a very advanced android, a so called super-replicant. He was learning, was growing up, was having fun. There was no aggression in his programming, even his deep programming. His role had been to assist with Project Patriot Progress, a project that was often spoken of, even more hinted at in recovered data but never clearly spoken of, but not in a violent manner. His role was still an obscure one.

 

PART 3

 

Another Master Guardian, Professor Geniusstein in the Smithsonian University, was attempting to create a very sophisticated, very complicated, project model that might give some idea of what President James Patriot Jackson was up to. The project was taking up a good deal of hitech resources but had already hinted strongly at certain possibilities.

 

The other Master Guardian was Field Marshal Rear Admiral, a seemingly eccentric but actually brilliant military commander who had kept the DC Citadel secure from Doomsday until the Orders of Steel had arrived. Now he had the difficult task of assisting the newcomers as much as possible while keeping certain sections of the DC Citadel hidden or, if not hidden, secured against newcomer desires.

 

Field Marshal Rear Admiral had recently sent some interesting data across to Abraham Washington that had given clues to the possible where about of another PJP-android. The big irony was that it was not very far from RivetCity itself but that did not mean it would be easy to get, far from it. For it was beneath the ships and beneath the floor of the river in a secret complex of some kind both mysterious and, most likely, bizarre. Data also indicated great danger. One also had to get through waters infested with perilous mutated aquatic lifeforms.

 

Then there was the Prime Guardian, she who was at the focused centre of all the activities of all of the Master Guardians and their Follower Guardians. She was in the real Pentagon hidden underground beneath the surface, subsurface false Pentagon. She took data from all of them and many other sources, feeding them info as they needed it.

 

Other Guardians were emerging to assist the Thirteen. They were also many centuries old but much younger than the Guardian Thirteen.

 

Then there the six year olds, thirteen of them, who were a mystery that had emerged seemingly from nowhere. The Guardian Thirteen observed them but did not interfere except when they needed and could do so to in order to keep the very young thirteen, and those with them, safe.

 

Which left the living god GreyMaharg. Just what was that entity up to?

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited July 14, 2010 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

49^th

NEOSOVIET HEGEMONIC GLORY

THE PEOPLE’S OPPRESSION

 

PART 1

 

NeoSoviet soldiers paced carefully along a winding crevice cut down into the rock not by nature but by Doomsday. They were not quite ghouls for some genetic alteration already in them, a NeoSoviet treatment, had caused them to lose their hair and to become covered with smooth boneskin. They were spectrouls, a word devised by Professor Frankenfane who had created many exotic inventions for the NeoSoviet Cause. They were aggressive but not wildly so like the zhouls.

 

The downward cutting crevace was one of the safe ways to go into or out of the central, normal part of the big island, but neither the biggest or main one. Not even the toughest soldiers went into the island's weirding zone unless they had to do so and that normally meant special patrols or escorting special parties sent into the ring shaped weirding zone for other reasons.

 

They wore NeoSoviet Marine combat fatigues and body-armour while carrying bullpup configured AKN autorifles that fired the improved international 5.5mm calibre and 30mm grenade-shells. One also carried an RGL69 rocket-grenade launcher on his back with a bulky elongated headed rocket-grenade already in place.

Unlike ghouls, they were all moderately fertile.

 

PART 2

 

Soft glowing fungus grew down both sides of the crevice in the close distance and two workers, both women, were busy harvesting the valuable stuff. These were Wastelander women captured in the NeoSoviet Hegemony found smack in the middle of a Weirding Zone.

 

The women were nervous though they tried to hide it for the NeoSoviet men treated them like dirt except those relatively few spectroul women considered as true comrades. The men ignored them, moving quickly past for they were going out on patrol into dangerous areas and needed to focus on survival and on doing their job of detecting threats to the isolated Hegemony.

 

If the spectrouls had been more observant they would have noted that the women did not have the right tools or collecting bags for gathering that kind of moss. Instead they had small, compact backpacks and each seemed to be hiding something.

 

When the soldiers were gone from sight, the women slipped quietly to their feet with speed and quietness as possible. Then they began to pace towards the way that the NeoSoviets had come from. They were freedom fighters against the Hegemony and they had time-bombs to prove it and a variety of targets to choose from. They were Unity and they were linked to the Union of Columbia Special Infiltration Service, the UCSIS, that had trained and equipped them.

 

PART 3

 

In the mist above and one side of the crevice, something big and lumbering stirred. It was like a ghoul in appearance of skin but it was huge, massive like a super-mutant behemoth. It was armoured and had the symbol of the Hegemony on back and front. The eyes gleamed with madness and intelligence. The huge creature stood slowly up, picked up a big weapon and then finished eating a very large radroach. With one last satisfying chew and swallow, the ghoulamoth was finished.

 

Despite the symbols on his armour, the ghoulamoth was no friend of the NeoSoviets or the monstrous Professor Frankenfane who was hiding on the island while he did vile experiments, often related to the ring shaped weirding zone. Frankenfane was a superclone of the DarkZiazin. Frankenfane had led the NeoSoviets invaders of the DC into a trap but now these surviving NeoSoviets were inclined to be allied to him for they were slowly but steadily declining.

 

The ghoulamoth followed the two women but above, beside the crevice. He meant them no harm, far from it, but wondered how a monstrous figure like himself could gain their trust.

 

Suddenly there was the sound of gun shots and he ran forward towards them. Then he leapt downwards into the crevice and crashed into the NeoSoviet elite soldiers firing at the two crouched women. These were not regular soldiers but NeoSoviet Special Forces. The ghoulamoth brought them down with a crash, all four of them, their autorifles being hurled in all directions. One he killed straight off and he injured the others despite their body-armour.

 

The two women sensed he was on their side. With autopistols ready, they ran over and finished off the three who were not dead. Then they stood there, looking up at the ghoulamoth with sheer astonishment.

 

He rumbled. "We must go into the weirding zone. There my people and I will guide and protect you. There is something in there that is a far greater threat to the DC Wastelands than are those arrogant, aggressive, stupid NeoSoviets or even Professor Frankenfane, the super genius who hides amongst them. It is a threat linked with not only the DarkZiazin but with the greater darkness behind him. I sense you are Unity. Unity must learn what we have to show and then pass that knowledge onto others such as GreyMaharg the living-god and the Guardian Thirteen."

 

Despite understandable feelings of fear, the two nodded and the leader of the two spoke. "Yes, we will go with you. Show us what you must, you who are close to Unity."

 

Then the three were clambering up the side of the crevice and were vanishing into the strange mist of the island's weirding zone.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited July 14, 2010 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

50^th

LUCKY EDDIE

DEALING WITH DEAD RAIDERS

 

PART 1

 

EddieJo crouched on a small rise of dirt above the big open pit half full with rotting raider bodies even as the settlers pushed dirt in on top of the corpses. These were the last and in his typical local type gear he looked much like the settlers scattered around himself. Other SEARF Troopers were moving around in and there were some SEARF Androids. All were pretending to be standard Wastelands humans.

 

Too much time had been spent in that one place trying to conceal what his special allies had done. Still he could not blame them for they were young and had never before encountered the brutal savagery of the raiders. They flittered like tiny metallic bugs through the air around him, all excited and curious. They were many but they were one, a hive mentality, a unity mind. They were the keybees.

 

He had also been gathering as much data as possible on these DC Wastelands and beyond, the whole former USA and the world. The settlers didn’t know and did not want to know much more than they needed to for their constant struggle for survival. He could hardly blame them for that.

 

He had now three SEARF super-soldier Platoons and two android platoons, a dozen multiple purpose missionbots and a robot platoon of SEARF special robots. There were also techs, medics and other specialists making up a taskteam of twenty-four. It was not always easy to deal with Orbis but the great alien entity had not gotten in the way of his Main Quest or his personal reason for being back on the home world. Yet only a few were exposed to the locals and all wore Wastelander gear.

 

OrbisMind had spoken to him of the living gods, the Ancients, the creators of Orbis but not in any real depth. At least one of these living gods was a loose cannon in the DC Wastelands and OrbisMind wanted EddieJo and the SEARF to track him. But how did one track a living god?

 

Orbis had rescued EddieJo and many others from the Greytorv, the quasi-undead creatures of the searing black eyes and life sucking aspect who were masters and creators of the zetan aliens. Zetans were human Greytorv hybrids but their human genetic heritage was not of the modern humans of that world but of primitive humans of a far older world.

 

EddieJo was honour bound to carry out the Main Quest but it did not feel right to him.

 

He sensed a local coming and the keybees gathered and shot into one of his pouches. It was only a settler with a jug of purified water but she was welcome and she was friendly.

 

PART 2

 

The mature but youthful appearing woman sat down next to him. She had only recently arrived at the settlement and yet was quite well known and liked by its people. She studied him a while, why he wondered why she felt oddly familiar to him, and she spoke. "Death does not disturb you so much."

 

EddieJo shrugged. "These Wastelands are so savage that I suppose any Wastelander would be the same. My people are Wastelanders so we are, of course, the same."

 

But she shook her head a little. "No, no you are not typical DC Wastelanders. In some ways you are too perfect, as if it is all a well researched and practised act, but you make many small mistakes. You move faster, are stronger and are more immune to pain, harder to damage, than even typical Wastelanders are. Are you Vaultfolk? Perhaps but I have met Vaultfolk and there is something that says you are not so."

 

He sighed. "I remember the DC back before Doomsday, back before World War Four. We observed the war from space, through a relay of satellites and outposts. We were SEARF and we were launched in a mighty fleet of three great systemships and five smaller ones to encounter any possible threat near Jupiter. Observation or battle or both, we were to carry it out. President James Patriot Jackson was there often to observe us training. Because he is my father, or at least he was my father, I spent some private time with him. Others may have assumed that I had a good time and sometimes it was but my father was quite insane. He made me kill my own younger brother simply because at a dinner my brother accidentally spilt sauce on the president's shoe. My brother was four years old at the time. If I had not killed my brother quickly, my sibling would have died slowly. Who are you really?"

 

She sighed right back at him. "I am your mother. I have been waiting for you to return as was foretold. I used to hate you for killing my younger son, he was so sweet, so wonderful, but I have long understood and I forgive you. I also learned you turned against the president and came close to killing him three times because of what happened to your younger brother. There is much for us to talk about."

 

He nodded and then took out his tripulser and shot her dead. The doppelganger that had pretended to be his mother, that the DarkZiazin had sent against him to fool EddieJo and gain knowledge from him, perhaps even to kill him, rolled onto the ground. As she lay there, the doppelganger began to literally melt into mist that evaporated and soon only her clothes and other gear remained.

 

Eddie'Jo sighed. "I hate doppelgangers!"

 

PART 3

 

OrbisMind spoke to him, to his mind, and EddieJo got a slight headache as he often did. "One has noted your killing of the doppelganger. One has noted you are quick to kill. One has noted you had to do so on this occasion. One considers the stars, the planets and the moons to be most favourable. One now asks you no longer to try to track GreyMaharg, the living-god. One wishes you to continue to expand your SEARF forces and to call JAGAF to you. One wishes you to remember your people on-in OrbisSanctuary. One wishes you to be more active in DC Wasteland affairs. One wishes you to seek strong alliances with positive forces of good. One wishes you to help the DC Wastelanders against the great evil. One wishes you to find your long lost family. One wishes to help you regain your younger brother and many others who were lost when the DarkZiazin twisted time in ways that he should not have done."

 

The voice was suddenly gone from his mind and the headache quickly faded away.

 

There was a sparkling shimmer where the doppelganger had died and a young, naked woman appeared there. She sat up and studied him with a frown on her face. "You pig, you killed me. That was very bad manners."

 

He gave her a mild grin. "You were going to kill me."

 

At that she frowned but made no effort to cover her body. "That is true, I suppose. I am Mozi now, of the MoziOrder and linked to the rising Unity. What will you do now?"

 

He shrugged a little, a subtle movement. "Try to prioritise all the things that Orbis wishes me to do. Try to gain more knowledge of this world, of the DC Wastelands. I suppose I better get you to my special base of operations. Your nudity is starting to attract the wrong type of attention. Did you kill the real woman?"

 

The former doppelganger spoke. "The one I looked like. No, I used more modern methods and used stolen DNA samples from your real mother. She is living in the Ghoul Underworld where she is called Carol and she has a ghoul son called Gob, not much of a name, in the settlement of Megaton. I suppose he is your half-brother. Was it true about your young brother?"

 

EddieJo shook his head. "I refused to kill him and I attacked my father. He almost killed me and in his rage he killed my little brother very quickly. I badly injured him and he never trusted to have me near him again unless he had many powerful bodyguards with him."

 

The Mozi nodded. "Too bad you did not kill the Mad President."

 

EddieJo sighed. "I did but he just came back to life even more deformed and powerful than he was before."

 

The woman frowned. "Typical!"

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited July 14, 2010 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

51^st

MERCENARY CONFLICTS

FIREFIGHTS TO THE DEATH

 

HUNTER MERCENARIES IN THE DC SUBWAY NETWORK

 

The leader of the rogue raiders, the Tru’Terrors, aimed his 5.5mm autorifle along the wide, dry sewerage tunnel of red brick. It was a part of a sewerage network abandoned decades before Doomsday but had become a hiding place for people desperate to escape from President James Patriot Jackson’s oppressive regime. The raiders were finding these Subwayers were damned tough and better equipped, supplied, than seemed possible.

 

7.5mm bullets exploded off a red brick wall just over the head of the raider leader. He cursed out loud and fired his weapon. His burst of three bullets missed everything but a brick wall that was part of a intersection of sewerage tunnels, two smaller ones flowing down into a bigger one.

 

A raider fell, her body riddled with explosive armour piercing 7.5mm bullets that had gone through her fleximetallic armour as if it was thin paper. Subway Guards had a heavy machinegun and two miniguns as covering fire to troopers in carbon fibre armour. Nobody was using explosive weapons because they feared they would bring the old sewer tunnels down on their own heads.

 

It was a fighting retreat for the Tru’Terrors and they were slowly but steadily being killed off, having lost eighteen of their comrades so far while the Subway Guardsmen had lost two soldiers. The leader grinned blood stained teeth for at least they would go down fighting. Gunfire echoed through the red brick tunnel. There was the humming of a pulselaser being fired. The leader was still grinning when he was shot in the back of the head as the ambush finally closed in fully on the raiders.

 

Then she was walking amongst the dead raiders in sleek, sexy black and grey stealth power armour. She clutched the Silent Death Carbine, or SDC-A3a1, in one power gloved hand as she moved. Then Modesty Blaze was crouching, was examining the dead raider leader carefully. What she wanted was found concealed inside his thin leather jacket beneath his fleximetallic armour.

 

Modesty Blaze was a Follower Guardian of Field Marshal Rear Admiral as were Marshal Ironsides of the Ironsides Mercenaries and Marshal Stella Prime of the Security Mercenaries. Her people were a much more invisible network of taskteams and service-support teams. They were the hunter-seekers, hunter-killers hunter-servitors serving both her and, through her, the Master Guardian over her. They were the Hunter Mercenaries.

 

Then she was slipping away datadisks and thin, metallic micropages of encoded data that the fool leader of the Tru’Terrors had stolen from his own Hordra Commander, after killing him, and then had let the word be spread that he had some special secrets for sale. Modesty Blaze had helped the Subway Guardsmen to get rid of this lethal force of highly skilled and much experienced raiders but she would not share her taken data with them.

 

SECURITY MERCENARIES NEAR GREYDITCH

 

The Security Mercenaries spread out even as they unleashed firepower upon the charging wave of giant flamer-ants. The flamer-ants, the soldiers, spat flames almost as lethal as those of a common flamer weapon. The mercenaries threw fragmentation grenades, fired autoguns of varied kinds but did not use flamers or flame-grenades for that kind of giant-ant was more resistant to flames and heat than others.

 

Greyditch had lost too many people thanks to the mad experiments of one Doctor Weston Lesko who had caused less harmful fire-ants to become mutated into larger, stronger and more lethal flame throwing monsters. A human soldier was engulfed in flames, running until others covered his fire-retardent armoured body with special foam.

 

A 10.5mm machinegun on a tripod hammered away at the enemy, ripping giant-ants to shreds, exploding their flame sacks and causing them to go up into flames.

 

The fighting went on as Greyditch folk started to shoot the flamer-ants from a safer distance with rifles of various kinds, sniping at the giant-ants carefully and with goodly effect.

 

Greyditch would survive but so would the flamer-ants to spread new colonies across a large part of the DC Wastelands and too soon flamer-ants would meet and start to worship the Antagonizer.

 

IRONSIDES MERCENARIES AT FORT COURAGE

 

Marshal Ironsides wanted Fort Courage, or what was left of it, cleared so that the Ironsides Mercenaries could occupy it. The platoon darted along a wide, armoured hallway and past deactivated booby-traps, detected and made harmless by scouts. The muffled sound of shooting came to them to them from where some scouts were trapped by some heavily armed gangers, former raiders from the Hordra Islands. Such made very tough gangers and were a new problem for the DC Wastelands to face.

 

Mercenaries fired tririfles, threw grenades, fired pulselasers and the building shook slightly as a booby-trap went off somewhere. A scout had moved a booby-trap against those who had previoulsy set it up. How was this known. Unity was rising amongst the Ironsides Mercenaries as it was the Security and Hunter Mercenaries. The Guardian Thirteen sensed it but were not concerned for they, in their own way, were already of the Unity.

 

Soldiers raced along the hallway in assault power armour becoming more common amongst the Ironsides. One fell.

 

Then the gangers were surrendering, just like that. Why? Because the Unity was emerging amongst them and because they had something dark to report, something they feared worse than the Ironside Mercenaries. They needed help as they brought forth three dying gangers, two women and a man, covered in glistening grey-black undeathobs that resisted strongly being removed though one could carefully burn-cut them off. These undead things drained energies from the victim even as they were cut away.

 

The Lieutenant commanding the Ironsides there, she quickly realised that this was above her capacity and authority to deal with. She soon was calling for any special assistance that could be sent to Fort Brave.

 

TALON MERCENARIES ON THE CENTRAL PATRIOT ISLAND

 

The Patriot Republic on the Central Patriot Island was crumbling. The Patriot Guard and other loyal forces to the Patriot Republican Party, the PRP, were unable to stop the collapse. This was partly because through their corruption and stupidity they were one of the major causes of it.

 

Talon Mercenaries were being sent by the DomniGovernment to safeguard DomniCommonwealth investments on the central island and to protect allies and to steal loot if they needed to leave in a hurry. In the semidarkness the platoon came into land on the coast, concealed their rubber dingy as much as possible and then went racing up the sand, through the dunes in their assault power armour. Light signals flashed ahead and the soldiers were soon meeting a Patriot Guard officer. The man did not look happy at having to deal with Talon Mercenaries but they did not care what he thought of them.

 

Yet even as they met the local officer, there was a burst of gunfire from the jungle undergrowth and the Patriot Guard lieutenant died. The Talon Mercenaries scattered into combat positions, dropping down into shelter as rebel fighters attacked. These rebels appeared to be well equipped and they were most likely veterans of the rebellion. Most likely they had learned of the arrival time and place of the mercenaries through corruption but the Talon Mercenaries had expected this might easily happen.

 

Bullets and rocket-grenades shot through the air along with pulsebeams that flickered brightly in the semidarkness. A grenade exploded. Somebody screamed and somebody cried out for a medic. Soldiers moved through the dark and fought each other with knives and laser-knives.

 

The fighting went on!

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited July 14, 2010 by Maharg67

[gormonk]

:biggrin: wickid read :biggrin:

[Maharg67]

52^nd

PRIME GUARDIAN

WAITING AND WATCHING

The Prime Guardian stood quietly studying a great holographic table-map in what was the Central War Chamber of the Pentagon. 3Dwallscreens showed scenes internal to the Pentagon and external from across the DC Wastelands and beyond. While the big chamber was mostly empty and covered with a light layer of dust, humans and androids moved around efficiently, quickly, or were cyberlinked into various localised network-systems. The humans were super-servitors, cousins of the super-soldiers, and the androids were replicants.

 

The Pentagon was divided into the largely ruined false Pentagon on and just below the surface, designed by the super genius of President James Patriot Jackson to mislead people, even the regular US military, into what really was happening. The Prime Guardian stood in the real Pentagon, still functioning smoothly, long hidden below the false one.

 

She stood in a metallic dull silver jumpsuit, black boots and a black boots along with a black multipouchbelt. On a big 3Dwallscreen was shown a scene of Brothers of Steel infiltrating the False Pentagon, moving carefully along a big partly ruined corridor. They were exploring and salvaging, a nice name for looting, anything they could find of value. Three MrPortys floated after them as big metallic MrGutsy like robots and each was already partly full with Predoomsday stuff be it books, ammo, stimpaks, weapons, tools, odd hardware bits, special preserved rations, holotapes, datadisks and much else. Some things were seemingly more mundane but were just as important thanks to the many shortages in the Wastelands.

 

Other 3Dwallscreens showed changing scenes from across the DC Wastelands.

 

The bridge tower of RivetCity being upgraded with new communications and radar hardware.

 

A group of settlers were heading back to resettle the DC Delaware area that they had earlier fled from as refugees escaping from the raiders.

 

Mirelurks hunting in a half filled glowcrystal lit and warmed cavern, the water full of toxins and high radiation that the strange creatures thrived in.

 

Camouflaged EagleEnclave scouts patrolling the area near Raven Rock, they being armed with plasma-rifles, a technology almost unique to them. They wore scout power armour.

 

Three big aeroships being repaired, upgraded and adjusted to DC Wastelands conditions at the bustling aeroyards at the swiftly expanding settlement of Sugartown.

 

Union of the Subways diplomats in a vertibird air-convoy of three machines making their way to RivetCity for a very important meeting. The Unions of the Subways, the River and of Columbia were starting discussions on merging. They did not know it but this was happening mainly because of the rise of the Unity amongst humans, even such as ghouls.

 

Hordrazza the fortress, abandoned by the escaped Hordra Lord and many of his Power Raiders, with raiders fighting over it. Firefights were breaking out all over the main island as anarchy and bloodshed broke out between different raider factions seeking to control the fortress. Matters were not much better on the other two Hordra Islands.

 

On Palmsio, the island, Spacers and Federats continued to set up a colony with the help of settlements. Robots and androids assisted humans in work power armour to assemble prefabricated modular and inflatable buildings. Sophisticated gravicopters were sitting, ready for use, on a big square of smart-concrete.

 

There were many such scenes.

 

The 3Dmap showed numerous flashing 3Ddatasymbols, many changing or moving or both. Activity was quieter, more passive now that the raider invasion had failed and the threat of the super-mutants had not emerged, at least for now.

 

The brief appearance of the undeathobs was just one strong clue that something very dark was coming to the DC Wastelands but so far she had not picked up any strong indicator of just where or how it might come.

 

The Prime Guardian continued, with patience, to monitor the situation.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited July 14, 2010 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

53^rd

SEEKING TRUTHS IN THE DC CITADEL

A VERY IMPORTANT MEETING IN THE DC CITADEL

 

PART 1

 

Field Marshal Rear Admiral strode along a great metallic hallway with Elder Owyn Lyons and Elder Mother Sarren’Wa following close at hand. The tall, oddly pudgie muscular man who led them wore stylised power armour with many grand rank symbols and a whole lot of amazing medals on the front, none of them real. As he marched along, Field Marshal Rear Admiral happily sang a military song in fluent Korean, every so often giving a small hop that had him crashing light against the metallic floor.

 

At first Elder Lyons had found him annoying and a little bewildering but had come to like him, to respect his great intelligence and amazing skills and experience as a military commander. Elder Mother Sarren’Wa was an old friend of Field Marshal Rear Admiral and always treated him with warmth and respect. The amazing man had helped to bring forth many resources in the DC Citadel forward for the newcomers to use including a network of hidden chambers, passageways, escapes and safe-vaults. Robots, androids, roboremotes and other equipment was passed over to the Orders of Steel to utilise.

 

Guards of Steel had begun to arrive at the DC Citadel. That Order of Steel were meant to be guards of various sites, convoys and to allow the Brotherhood and Sisterhood of Steel to better carry out missions in the field. Aeroships and aeroflyers brought them in convoys for the Orders of Steel were being forced to abandon the Mid-West for now. As they withdrew from there, going to California and to the DC, they took others with them, not all of these others being human. They also took much loot with them. Why were they leaving the Mid West? Because California was coming under increasing threat, again, by the EagleEnclave and the DC clearly needed more forces while the Mid West itself was becoming more dangerous. Chases had to be made, priorities

 

Field Marshal Rear Admiral came to an abrupt halt, whirled and faced a heavy armoured door in an area that had been cleverly hidden until that moment. He had recently opened up a large area of autorobotic industrial workshops, garage-workshops, storerooms, computer centres, VR-chambers, holoprojector chambers, depots, barracks, autorobotic laundries and much else of use but so far had refused to let any of the Orders of Steel below those levels. Still, there were twelve great levels now open and the Orders of Steel were busy dealing with them.

 

Until now!

 

Why now?

 

PART 2

 

Field Marshal Rear Admiral pressed his palm against a red glowing crystalline plate embedded in a steel plate. There were no other visible controls. The door, which was as huge and round like that of a VaultTekVault main door rumbled as it slid back and then rolled to one side to expose a large chamber that was full of bright orange green light in slowly changing patterns.

 

Reluctantly Elder Lyons followed but the Elder Mother paced into the big chamber serenely as if she had done this before. With her it was very hard to tell. The Elder frowned when the huge armoured door rolled closed behind them.

 

They stood facing each other in that strange shifting pattern of now other colours of light that altered their appearance and made odd effects of shadows and reflections on the smooth metal walls of the dome shaped chamber. The lights came from a central orb revolving on a dais. Around it stood eight, compass direction placed metallic disk shaped platforms. Everything was large and the dome shaped chamber was huge.

 

Elder Lyons stared at the machine in wonder. "What is it?"

 

Field Marshal Rear Admiral spoke quietly but his voice carried well. "One of President James Patriot Jackson's most remarkable and terrible achievements. Multiple functional only begins to describe this thing. It is quasiliving, neither truly non living or truly alive. It is not undead or unlife as found in a mirror universal existence to this one. This can allow one to travel through space to other alternate realms of various kinds, it can transform one into another type of lifeform, it can change robots or other machines, it can be used to effect the very time-space fabric. This wonder-mechanism is one reason that Doomsday took place, a primary reason, but only one primary reason. I wanted to show you this, Elder Lyons, because there are nine Lesser, three Mediate and one Prime Wonder-Mechanissms in the DC Citadel that the enemy, the DarkZiazin and the power behind him, manipulating him, want very badly. One day a great battle will rage here."

 

After a pause he spoke again. "This is the Prime Wonder-Mechanism. Your people can not even try to use this. Even the living-gods would be wary of doing so."

 

PART 3

 

One moment he was not there and then GreyMaharg was standing there, smiling and putting his massive backpack down as if it was very light though it was not. He stretched and sighed. Then the strange little man grinned lightly. "Right, very right of you to say that though I am not sure you, a living-demigod, can speak for such as me. The Guardian Thirteen are living-demigods and living-demigoddesses."

 

GreyMaharg stopped talking and studied the mechanism carefully. He shook his head in wonder. Then he spoke. "That is the Thirteenth Ziazin, the Ziazin Thirteen being all linked with the DarkZiazin himself but with his alter-egos that the DarkZiazin does not know exists and which we only know little of, sense little of. For now we can not turn that thing off, we can not move it, we can not destroy it, we can not even get closer than the platforms. There is a random element to any use of the Thirteenth Ziazin that makes it problematic to use.

 

Elder Mother Sarren’Wa showed sadness for a moment. "The Mad US President sent many unwilling volunteers to those eight platforms. A few vanished never to be seen again but others returned either on the same or on different platforms, changed. They are all here in a special section of the DC Citadel. If the need is great enough, some will help defend the DC Citadel and if they do, the enemy will be in for a terrible blow."

 

Elder Lyons sort of smiled. "Thank you for trusting me to come here though I am not sure I would otherwise willingly want to know about such a terrible, wonderful device. May we take a look at the other wonder-mechanisms?"

 

Field Marshal Rear Admiral nodded. "Yes and right now is the best time to do so."

 

PART 4

 

There were the nine Lesser Wonder-Mechanisms that each was a prototype for such machines that were to revolutionise the USA. Not all had made it out to the wider world and most had done so only in a limited manner.

 

First was a Mattercator that created baseline materials of many kinds from energy. Mattercators had appeared in the DC in underground manufactoring complexes and in other specialised complexes but most factories did not gain them.

 

Second was a Replicator that could use Matticated baseline materials to create duplicates of machines, structures and even living bodies but nothing that came out of it was alive or even active. Replicators appeared only in special complexes deep inside the DC that also had Mattercators. They could create basic replicant or duplicant androids.

 

Transways were a form of cable-teleport network-system able to send non living materials almost instantly from one Transway Station to another or from a Transway Station to a more basic Receptor Station. Life-forms had to be put in suspended animation in status-capsules before they could safely be sent. The Transways were only used to link very special sites and used most carefully.

 

Teleportways were a network of Teleport Stations but they turned out to be tricky, to have a slight random chance of vanishment, and they became used only for very special services, with highly restricted uses.

 

Super Virtual Reality, on a synthetic psychic and super sensory interactive level beyond any earlier developed form of virtual reality. Apart from Braun's set-up at VirtualVault-0112, none were known to be active.

 

Regenerative Treatments for living and non living regeneration of cells or materials of other kinds. These became very influential in the decade or so before World War Four and Doomsday.

 

Antigravity boosters had meant that rocketships had lifted more easily, more efficiently, and colonies had appeared in space.

 

Roboticator was a machine to robotise humans and animals, to cyborg them, to turn criminals and misfits into expendable labour, soldiers or other uses. Thankfully the system had never gone beyond the one machine.

 

Elder Lyons was clearly amazed as he made his way through the huge chamber with nine great platforms in a three by three square formation. He was also horrified at the Roboticor device. The others had seen the chamber before, had walked around these wonder-mechanisms. Elder Lyons was sensing that there were important things that the Sister Pathfinder and Field Marshal Rear Admiral were not saying. He turned and looked to them.

 

Field Marshal Rear Admiral spoke to the Brother of Steel. "Now for the next three. Through that door there is another large chamber."

 

GreyMaharg stood quietly to one side, observed and said nothing.

 

PART 5

 

Three more wonder-mechanisms and again Elder Owyn Lyons was impressed. He studied the machines, each on its own large disk shaped platform, and he walked around the traingular formation of platforms studying them carefully. The three were:

 

Powerators that could, in theory, boost the physical and mental, perhaps even the psychic powers of individuals. Only the prototype was made.

 

Altways were a network of Altportation Stations meant to send people and goods etc. to Alternate Earths. They were never fully put into operation.

 

Rejuve Treatments promised extended lifespans and much else but did not really appear outside of the DC Citadel before Doomsday.

 

The elder stopped, looked thoughtful and then he turned to his companions with a soft frown. "The machines here, while remarkable, are perhaps not remarkable enough to be seperate from those nine in the other chamber."

 

Elder Mother Sarren’Wa responded. "These three are prototype failures. Terrible experiments were carried out with them. They are decoys from what ever were really named as the three Mediate Wonder Mechanisms, if there are only three. We do not know where they are or what uses they are being put to."

 

Elder Lyons frowned. "I would like the Orders of Steel to be able to study all of the mechanisms."

 

GreyMaharg nodded. "Yes but I will always be here and sometimes I will block some knowledge from you. Agreed?"

 

Reluctantly, Elder Lyons did so. There was no way he was going to ignore the wishes of a living-god.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited July 14, 2010 by Maharg67