PLANET FALLOUT THIRTEEN

[Maharg67]

-35-

 

GAMMATI, BETENA, ALPHANA

OUMMUO

 

Clansguards in battle power armour were on patrol and sentry duty through out the Clansfolk town of VeRajo when something else came through from UnityEarth, the huge, distorted and unstable copy of Centralia. A brigade of the soldiers, who looked much like Troopers of Steel, had come in by helicopters from the nearest Clansguardia Border Fort. The Clansguardia Commander there had refused to believe that the situation in the town needed more than a brigade but she had also sent two support platoons of Knights in bigger, more powerful knight power armour and with bigger, more powerful weapons.

 

Supermutants appeared in loose battle formations. Massemoths like ugly human body builders, megamoths even larger and more powerful but also huge, thundering behemoths. All had body-armour and weapons like big powerful bolt-action rifles, heavy machineguns, rocket launchers and others that were very like those of World War Two of Earth in style. For these supermutants wore German Nazi like colours and the infamous Nazi symbol like a reversed sun cross. The supermutants were berserker enraged and yet controlled in their fury.

 

But they were not alone. Human soldiers came also in Nazi Stormtrooper power armour with metallic Nazi enclosed helmets, metallic jackboots and large autorifles, general purpose machineguns, rocket-grenade launchers, flamers and exotic xoblazer and xolaser energy weapons.

 

The Clansguardia were well used to fighting border skirmishes with bandits, with exotic varieties of muties, with gangers and such like, but not with fighting an army that came out of seemingly nowhere. They fell back firing their weapons or crouched in hopefully useful defensive formations. A knight exploded and fell backwards, the Clansguard inside being wounded but she would live. Supermutants were swept to the ground, blasted by 20mm shells, 30mm shells, pulselaser pulsebeams and pulseblaster blastpulses. A Stormtrooper exploded and fell.

 

The fighting was savage and yet both sides knew enough to crouch, to take what cover that they could, except for the crazed berserker supermutants.

 

It seemed that the Clansguards were going to be swept into oblivion and the settlement would fall when Clanswarriors came to the rescue, less formal and in traditional Clansfolk weaponry and body-armour, moving with impressive speed. They came with explosive tipped arrows fired from composite bows, with battleguns that were each three weapons in one, with boxcrossbows that fired many explosive tipped bolts, with laserblades of various kinds and with a variety of throwing weapons, exotic spears and even swords.

 

The Clanswarriors exploded straight up, right out of the ground, and were suddenly amongst the enemy fighting with amazing skill.

 

Amongst the real warriors were Gammati, Betena and Alphana who struck with superhuman speed, strength, agility and toughness. They struck out with no weapons but armoured fists and booted feet, smashing the enemy through the air, wiping them out with horrifying ease.

 

Which was when the enemy retreated back to where they had appeared and began to vanish. They were leaving as quickly as they could in a way that was quite puzzling. They had failed and they were returning to UnityEarth.

 

OummuO observed quietly until the last enemy was gone and then OummuO went amongst the wounded defenders and healed them. OummuO went amongst the invaders and made them vanish, dead or alive, but the invader’s equipment and supplies was left behind.

Edited September 7, 2010 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

http://i592.photobucket.com/albums/tt9/Dragonpen61/Forum%20Terminal%20Pix%201/TERMINAL-IT-Workit-00046.jpg

Edited September 19, 2010 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

-36:1-

 

BOBBY, BENNY BOBBINS

 

Sheriff Lucas Simms made his peace with the triplets by giving Benny a teddy-bear robot, a lolly-pop, a hug and a kiss along with some words of regret. The sheriff was a proud man but he had been forced to take a second look at what had happened. Anyway he got sick of sleeping on the couch with his wife being angry at him for what he had done.

 

Sheriff Lucas Simms sat with Bobby and was holding Benny against his chest in a way that showed he was experienced with handling babies, in the Brass Lantern diner. The Brass Lantern diner was fair sized and growing larger as new chambers were being dug out of the side of the crater.

 

Lucas frowned softly. “Something big is going on but somehow it’s hiding itself pretty good. Most evidence says that Centralia, the Wastelands, are much as they have been for a very long time but then there are hints otherwise. The smashed plot to destroy Sugartown is an example of this. Who would have thought that such an amazing crime would have come so close to being successful.”

 

Bobby nodded. “What data is being collected to find out just what is taking place? What are the Secret Regulators doing?”

 

Sheriff Lucas Simms gave Bobby a puzzled look. “Who are these Secret Regulators that you speak of?”

 

Bobby shrugged. “We have picked up the idea that there is an organization, perhaps a subnetwork of some kind, linked to the Regulators that are known as the Secret Regulators.”

 

The sheriff shook his head. “Nothing that I heard about and I thought I was closely allied to the Regulators. Then again, they have been getting more clandestine and odd behaving over the last few years. Paranoid almost. I have a feeling that a large faction of Regulators wants the Regulator HQ moved to CentraliaCity. I doubt it is a coincidence that the same faction has its power base in that same city. ”

 

CentraliaCity was the only real city that the United Settlements of Centralia had and it was the official capital of the USC. With every passing year CentraliaCity seemed more aloof, more isolated and less communicative with the rest of the USC. Also CentraliaCity seemed to be the base of various attempts to take over many organizations by deception and manipulation; this included the Regulators, the United Settlements of Centralia Lesser Settlements Council, the Orderhood of Compassion, the University of CentraliaCity and even the Orderhood of Steel. Those mentioned had failed but what of others not so known about?

 

What did the stories of the odd conspiracy of infiltration and attempted take overs have in common with other odd and disturbing stories circulating in increasing numbers and increasing strangeness?

Edited September 7, 2010 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

-36:2-

 

BUFFY BOBBINS

 

Buffy Bobbins was with Mayor Elaine Harrington when news came through of the bizarre vanishment of the populations of eight small settlements, including livestock and other animals. The small settlements, a mixture of thorps and hamlets, had been stripped of all moveable resources of value. It had happened with amazing speed and precision, almost as if the settlers themselves had helped in the process. There had also been many strange tracks and other signs in the area.

 

Yes, the process had been so quick and efficient that settlers who had left their settlements only to go out for quick hunting or other trips, had come back to devastated and empty communities. Some bounty-hunters passing through the area had volunteered to help the locals, odd behaviour for such folk, and groups had tried to find where all the vanished settlers had gone to.

 

The tracks, as easy to follow as they were, led to a purple tower after going from settlement to settlement. Nobody was going to try to follow using the horrors of the purple towers.

 

While none of the settlements actually belonged to the USC, they were all part of the broader United Settlements Treaty Alliance, USTA. Why ‘treaty alliance’? Because there had once been both a treaty and an alliance that had meant different levels of commitment to joint action; when the two were combined, it had turned out simpler to combine the two names for clarification purposes.

 

The USC Government, USCG, at once sprang into action by creating a subcommittee to study the situation but refused to send any form of expedition to the site of the troubles. The United Settlements Guard, USG, did send an expedition but somehow failed to inform the USG High Command in CentraliaCity until the expedition was examining the sites of the settlements with survivors and others, including others who had come with the expedition. Typically the USCG-HC, they demanded that the expedition be disbanded at once. Why? They gave no reason. More and more the orders coming out of CentraliaCity were increasingly arrogant, arbitrary, unwise or even illogical. The expeditionary command sent no reply, official or otherwise, to CentraliaCity but kept on working on the local mystery.

 

They found the helicopter that some gangers were trying to carry away with little success. The Guardsmen struck fast and heavy, taking the gangers prisoner and the helicopter along with items taken by the gangers out of the machine. In the past the machine would have been sent to CentraliaCity but, with the growing schism between the capital and the rest of the USC, it was sent to the settlement of Machtale instead. Machtale was a fair sized USC settlement with light industry, many workshops and a capacity to build small airships plus airboats. It also had some other special resources.

 

Machtale had a small but highly efficient research, development and back engineering complex that could take a good look at the atomic motorised

 

Elaine stretched and tried to make herself more comfortable in her much fixed up office swivel-chair. “Your advise was good. The individuals you pointed out as being dangerous in the expedition from CentraliaCity, were the dangerous ones. I wonder who you really serve, where you really come from, what you really are. That is you, your brother and big little sister. What a lovely way of putting your relationship with your sister.”

 

Big little sister? Big meaning older and little meaning physically smaller. The neobabies liked that way of speaking of such relationships because the word ‘big’ was always there sometimes even if the word ‘little’ also was; perhaps they figured the two terms balanced each other out.

 

Buffy shrugged. “Our memories have largely been taken from us. Yet they are slowly returning and clarifying. We come from what Unity calls UnityEarth and many also call it that. It is a copy of Centralia trapped inside a great sphere that is half ocean and half atmosphere. The copy of Centralia was meant to be bigger than the original but it turned out to be amazingly bigger and unstable. It also turned out to be more exotic than even Centralia is and, in some ways, even more dangerous. The Unity escaped there after creating UnityEarth using their newly awoken powers and stolen human-alien hybrid technologies of great capacity but Unity did not truly understand or control those technologies. UnityMind and the UnityElders dominate the rest of Unity there through the UnityNetwork and the UnityOrders but they never did gain full control of UnityEarth, far from it, and now they are slowly but steadily losing what control they did first attain.”

 

Buffy went on. “To make matters worse, the Patriot Thirteen learned of what Unity had done to escape from Doomsday and followed Unity to UnityEarth. They took their puppets, followers and creations with them. The Patriot Thirteen took over a large part of what they call PatriotEarth but they are also losing control of their empire. The Patriot Empire and the Unity Unionate are constantly skirmishing with each other but they do not wage greater war because both have more dangerous threats to deal with on that world that should never have been made to exist.”

 

After a moment Elaine laughed in startlement and then spoke. “At most I thought you might have come from the Solsystem space colonies or from North America or something like that. I had considered perhaps a sleeper bunker or something like that. There were other ideas but nothing like you have come up with. Yet I believe you.”

 

Then Elaine sighed. “I belong to what are called the Guardian Thirteen. In truth there are thirteen Lord Guardians but many more Secondary and Follower Guardians plus the Guardian Guardmark and various subGuardians, semiGuardians and demiGuardians. After Doomsday we were created by an alliance of powerful individuals and small groups who had somehow survived. Many came from Centralia but a surprisingly large number came from beyond Centralia. We are driven by one major and three minor causes but we will speak of such later. Right now we have another tedious meeting to go to with the envoys from CentraliaCity.”

 

Buffy nodded. It seemed both of them had taken a gamble in opening up to each other except that Buffy had already known about the existence of the Guardian Thirteen though not much about it.

Edited September 7, 2010 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

http://i592.photobucket.com/albums/tt9/Dragonpen61/Forum%20Additives/storymix-023-1.jpg

[species5478]

The Patriot Thirteen? Wasn't there a group with that name in the Metal Gear Solid game?

[Maharg67]

I checked, Species5478, but I couldn't find any reference to the Patriot Thirteen though I did find the term 'Patriot' used in the game.

 

http://i592.photobucket.com/albums/tt9/Dragonpen61/Forum%20Additives/all-terrain-hybrid-1-1-1.jpg

[Maharg67]

-37-

 

UNITY FREE INFLUENCE

HARLEQUIN AS JONAH

 

Doc Hoff carefully placed the strange and disturbing black and red ring on top of a large, flat rock and taking out his pulselaser-pistol, he backed off until he was at the longest effective range he could go. He put the pulsebeam setting to full and then he aimed carefully.

 

Which was when the subtle but powerful warning came to him that if he did this the resulting explosion would equal that of a small thermonuclear weapon. In other words it would wipe out him, his people and a good deal of life and landscape in all directions. With a curse he slipped the pulselaser-pistol into its special holster.

 

He had come to both fear and hate the thing ever since he had put it into a pouch and taken it with him. The others felt the same, including the animals and he sensed that around him the flora and fauna were not happy about it being there.

 

Why had such a powerful, evil device been in the possession of a monstrous thug like Ned Salter?

 

The man stepped out of mid air and somehow failed to take Doc Hoff by surprise. He was tall, slimly muscular and dressed in fine white trousers, polished black shoes, a black tophat, white leather gloves, a nice white dinner jacket and an odd metallic silvery gentleman’s vest. In one hand he had a black walking-stick and in the other a black doctor’s bag.

 

He smiled at Doc Hoff. “What you see there should not exist on this world.” He put down his doctor’s bag so that it rested in mid air as if on an invisible table top. He pulled out a silvery pocket-watch on a fine silvery chain and examined it. “Time-space coordinates are just fine.” He then put away the old fashioned looking pocket-watch. “I am Harlequin as Jonah. My main mission is to hunt down and deal with the monstrous chaotic force that is Retirowa as Samsu, to bring her to justice of a kind that your human mentality could not begin to understand. I do not mean that as an insult. Now, as a part of my secondary duties, I will deal with the ring.”

 

He reached into a pocket and pulled out a sparkling, glowing silvery globe. Then, deftly, he dropped into onto the bizarre ring. With a flash of red light, the ring was suddenly inside the sphere. Harlequin as Jonah carefully lifted up the sphere, threw it lightly into the air and it vanished with a sparkling flash.

 

Doc Hoff shook his head in wonder. “Where did it go?”

 

Harlequin as Jonah smiled. “Another dimensional realm where the laws of nature are very different to the ones here. I must go now but, Doc Hoff, we will meet again. I depart but leave you with a gift for your courage.”

 

Then the strange man vanished with a sparkling shimmer.

 

With another sparkling shimmer appeared a MrGutsy like MrPorty that turned out to be loaded down with fine tradegoods including a large range of medicines. The MrPorty hovered on its fanjets and Doc Hoff was glad that he and his people had at least gained some profit from the expedition. They set out soon after for a settlement where they would, of course, carry out more trading.

Edited September 7, 2010 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

http://i592.photobucket.com/albums/tt9/Dragonpen61/Forum%20Additives/13-00042.jpg

 

INTERLUDE

 

CNR NEWS BULLETIN

 

“It’s the one and only 3Dog here! You having a good day, folks, well I hope so. The sun is shining bright and hot in these parts and the radroaches are staying in the shade but I suppose you want actual news, don’t you.”

 

“Raiders are showing up, no surprise, but not just the uglyskins but new kinds. Yeh, the stories are true, some gangers and bandits are now pretending to be raiders, trying to gain by copying. Well I say good look to them because they are going to need it. But those aren’t the new raiders that are of concern. The beautiful raiders are here. Yes, I said it, attractive but very nasty raiders that are attractive until you look into their cold as ice eyes. Are they superhumans? Well, yes it seems that they are.”

 

“The beautiful raiders struck in the north-east first, roughly speaking, just as the ugly raiders first did. So come distant stories drifting in from that direction. Odd thing is they don’t seem to like the ugly raiders much at all. If the two types of raiders meet, they fight briefly and then move away from each other.”

 

“So, what is going on? Sorry, folks, but your guess is as good as mine. Just be careful out there, as you always are, but even more so. Oh yes, please stop sending me any more electric toasters. Really, I was joking, seriously. I already have a small storeroom full of them.”

[Maharg67]

-38-

 

UNITYFREE

 

UnityFree influence grew stronger amongst the seminomads who had settled close by in the great underground build that had been found for them. The other settlement was soon being called Betaburg, a name that had started out as a bad joke but which had stuck. Soon a trade outpost called Gammaburg sprang up, a surface settlement to welcome traders, scavengers and other travellers, including various paramilitary and military patrols. Brother Outcasts came visiting in their battle power armour and with their battlebots and in their four wheel drive armacars and six wheel drive armatrucks.

 

There were plenty of factions in Centralia but despite that much of the Wastelands were either not inhabited by the so called sentient folks or only inhabited lightly. So the Brother Outcasts had little trouble in stamping their territorial hold on a fairly large area with much promise, to them, of finding PreDD technological treasures.

 

The Brother Outcasts were foolishly arrogant and over confident of their fighting power. Yet there was some good reason for this as they were all experienced veterans with battle tested and refined weapon network-systems of various kinds, robots, power armour, mechas, wheeled armoured vehicles and some others. Their armacars and armatrucks used roboremote combined weapon and instrumentation turrets.

 

The Brother Outcasts had little respect for most Wastelanders who they assumed were all primitive, superstitious and stupid. Because of this they often failed to see what was in front of them and failed to gain special opportunities that some good diplomacy would have gained them. For the so called ‘natives’ had, of course, a good deal of knowledge about local conditions, myths, whispers and other clues to what the Brother Outcasts were looking for.

 

At first the Orderhood of Steel’s attitude, with some exceptions, had not been much better but that was a steadily improving situation. Soldiers, Sages, Scribes, Sappers, Guards and others ‘of Steel’ were working cooperatively with local peoples more and more, largely because there was little choice due to the lack of many resources.

 

But there were some odd contradictions about the Brother Outcasts. They did help natives in trouble if they came upon them in trouble. They did not try to cheat any locals if trading with them or if they bought special information or finds from them. Sometimes they were surprisingly generous with information about what they were doing. They also had a large and growing settlement in Fort Independent, the Citadel of Outcasts, where many peoples lived who came in from the Wastelands. In other words, ‘natives’ who gained the protection of the Brother Outcasts.

 

So in balance, despite their awful attitude towards local people, the Brother Outcasts did more good than bad. So when the Brother Outcasts asked if they could set up a small outpost in Gammaburg, they were given permission at once with out any expectations of having to pay for the privilege.

 

Edited September 7, 2010 by Maharg67