Radiance

Chapter 72: Working on the Railroad.

"Alright Fuller its safe to say you have our attention but forgive me if we don't outright trust every person that simply walks through our door, so if you want in you are going to have to prove it and your worth as well, to my eye you have the look of a heavy about you and I think I have just the op to test you out, if you do well then we'll talk again, if not, well chances are you won't be seeing much of anything again so neither of us will have to worry about it, so what do you say?" Desdemona said looking Fuller up and down with a very scrutinising eye.

"Just point me in the right direction and tell me the brief, I'll get it done," Fuller said and Desdemona nodded.

"Think I'm gonna like this one a can-do attitude goes a long way around here," a large black woman holding what appeared to be a laser gatteling gun said with an approving nod, she was also running her eyes over him in a scrutinising fashion.

"Alright, I see you already got a Pipboy that's good it'll be useful, I'll give you a set of co-ordinates head there and you'll be met by your contact, they will identify themselves with the sign 'Looks like it might rain later on,' to which you will reply 'I hope it's not acid this time,' they will give you your brief and go with you to evaluate your performance, is that clear?" she asked and Fuller nodded as he looked at the co-ordinates that had just been transferred to his Enclave modified Pipboy.

"Crystal any chance of a head's up on what type of op I'm heading into so I know what to pack ahead of time?" he asked and Desdemona gave him a wry smile.

"If you truly are what you say you are and then worthy of joining us it won't matter as you'll be able to adapt and overcome now won't you?' she said and with a final nod from both her and the large black woman they vanished back behind an obvious secret door which slid back into place with a grinding clank.

"Hmmm, the Starlight Drive-In? Sounds like an old movie theatre or something?" Fuller said trying to make it sound like he was talking to himself in case he was being observed which given how secretive these people were was a high likelihood.

"Starlight Drive-In got it, heading there now, we'll set up on the place ahead of time, see you there, over and out," Fletcher's voice said into his skull through the subdermal implant that vibrated the bones in his inner ear to create the sounds that he heard.

With that Fuller turned and began to long trek northwards out of the city and through the ruined but still flourishing countryside towards his destination, despite this basically being one big double cross op he actually still couldn't help looking forwards to getting his teeth into some action, plus somehow it actually felt like he might be doing some good here despite his actual intentions so there was that too.

It wasn't a short walk Northwards by any means but Fuller prided himself on his fitness as he liked to maintain his body and to keep it at its peak condition, he was not one of those soft sods who liked to let their armour do all the work for him, though despite that he did feel somewhat naked out here without it as it did offer a barrier between you and the outside world which given the state of this world was definitely not a bad thing at times.

To maintain an air of professionalism Fuller and the team maintained radio silence during the trip as they had no idea if he was being observed or not, he had been running counter surveillance drills the entire way but what with the existence of Stealth Boys and stealth suits out there it was not at unlikely that someone was out there not just lurking in the shadows by standing in the sunlight as bold as brass and as invisible as the air.

Though paranoia that was induced by running counter surveillance drills led him to see shimmers almost everywhere, sometimes it was heat haze, sometimes it was dust, but all the same, it put Fuller right on edge.

At the same time more than once he swore that he heard a voice talking on the wind or at least that's how it sounded like it was far away and drifting on the wind, "Is this what you truly want?" it asked softly and he spun around snapping his rifle into the aim looking around himself, it sounded soft almost feminine but no matter what direction he looked in there was simply nothing.

"Fucking jumping at shadows here, need to get a lid on this shit," Fuller grumbled to himself.

"All you believe is a lie," another whisper said sounding like it floated right past him as it spoke and Fuller's eyes darted about trying to pin it down but once again he found nothing, he couldn't risk continually talking or his sub dermals would begin transmitting everything he said to Fletcher and she would most likely think he was going crazy which would result in a section 8 and he'd probably wind up in the bioweapons lab as a test subject.

So shaking it off and giving himself a very hard mental slap he soldiered on, it was only a few more miles to his meet up and that's when his comms sparked up, "We've arrived at the target site and are set up, we have eyes on and there's no sign of movement so they are either inside one of the three buildings or are not here yet over," Sarge's voice said.

"Roger that," Fuller hissed and he quickly picked up the pace.

It didn't take him long to cover the remaining ground to reach the Starlight Drive through and he'd been spot on when he'd guessed that it was an old pre-war cinema, there was a giant screen on one side with various slip-on speak systems designed to be clipped into the cars of the patrons a few of which still remained with the remains of the unsuspecting souls that had been caught in the blasts still inside them.

On the other side of the lot was a large refreshment stand that would have most likely also housed the projector, Fuller looked around the place and he couldn't see any sign of anyone hanging about though as he headed for a small pond in the centre of it he did notice some tracks in the dust and dirt that were pretty fresh which indicated that someone had been here very recently.

As he knelt down to examine it the first thing he noticed was that they were pretty small, definitely not a man by the shape and size of them, well not unless he was wearing a woman's size four boot anyway and by the tread of them they belonged to a Stealth suit which either indicated Number 9 had been through here or there was another girl in a Stealth suit hanging about here though the tread pattern did not look to be Enclave so he was leaning towards the latter there.

Suddenly a voice spoke to him from no-where and this did not sound like the whisper he'd heard in the wastes as he'd been walking up here, "You know I heard it might rain later on," it said and Fuller stood stiffly up as he could positively feel the weapon pointed at his head despite not being able to see it.

"I hope it's not acid this time," he said giving the countersign clearly and concisely.

Suddenly a small shape just popped into existence as her stealth suit deactivated and the figure of a small woman who stood about just over five feet tall appeared out of thin air a few feet from him and just like he'd felt she'd been holding a plasma rifle trained on him.

"So you are the prospective heavy I was told to expect?" she said walking right up to him before circling him and scrutinising him closely.

"That would be me name's......" he began but she held up a hand sharply to silence him.

"Don't you know anything? We don't use real names around here, helps with plausible deniability, you'll get given a call sign slash moniker when you get accepted, but for now, I think I'll call you.....Clawbait, yeah that'll do because you look like you'd be useful for drawing out Deathclaws from their nests if need be so come on Clawbait let's get moving and I'll tell you what's going down on the way, oh and I'm Mouse by the way," the little figure said.

"Clawbait? Seriously?" Fuller said raising an eyebrow at the masked woman who thanks to her obviously Chinese Stealth suit looked like a mini ninja.

"Well, I was thinking Clawshit at first as well you know you look like they chew you up and shit you out but then I thought Nah it's your first time out so I'll be kind," she said and he could actually feel the grin under her helmet as she said it,

"You sure Mouse isn't short for Mouse balls or something? You know because your fucking tiny and you got some fucking balls on you?" Fuller said making her snort a laugh.

"Like it, think you and me are gonna get along just fine, right but enough flirting let's get moving we got an important job to do here, the Railroad don't do fucking fetch quests for prospectives we like to throw you guys in at the deep end and well you either swim like a fucking champ or sink like a fucking rock, so let's go see if your a fish or stone shall we?" Mouse said beckoning for him to follow with her hand.

"Alright, so what's the op?" Fuller asked as the very oddly matched pair headed further north away from the drive-in.

"Synth recovery, we had a pair being moved out when they got hit by a load of Gen ones, took out all of our guys but not before our guys were able to stash em somewhere safe and hit their beacons, I told the head shed that we needed to handle this ourselves and to send some of our heavies with them as this one didn't smell right but would they listen? Hell no, said it would be fine as we'd used these caravan guys before and they were trustworthy, well at least they were that, no bloody good at fighting but at least they had the sense to stash the synths before they got snatched, now it's our job to dig those poor fuckers out of the heap of Claw shit they are buried in with the copious expenditure of ammunition and to complete their run, bloody amateurs should not be doing this stuff it just leads to more problems down the road," Mouse said.

"Gen ones?" Fuller asked and Mouse shot him an unreadable glance thanks to her gold-plated face plate.

"Oh yeah that's right, total freshy, alright kid listen up this is institute one oh one, now by the sound of it and by that accent of yours you are not from around these parts so you probably haven't seen the fucking terminator wannabes wandering around the place but gen ones and twos are basically lights and fucking clockwork, think walking talking metal skeletons that while they ain't too fucking smart still aim and fucking shoot with the speed of a robot and not a half fried protectron either, these guys can shoot the balls off a mouse at hundred paces leaving the fucker alive," she said.

"So that's what happened to yours then eh?" Fuller said making her snort another laugh.

"And yet they are still bigger than yours but I digress, they can be a real pain in the arse to take down especially when they warm you, so the trick is to put the fuckers down hard in as few shots as possible before they can call in your location to the others nearby and there are always others nearby, twos are easy to spot as they always have more parts hanging off them and some armour to their vitals, though same rules apply to these guys as humans, go for the head or heart, kill either the CPU in the skull or the main power unit in the chest and they fucking stay down, just don't bother with limb shots as it won't do fuck all but slow em down," she said and Fuller nodded pulling his rifle down and checking it.

Mouse glanced at it, "Nice piece you got there, where'd you pick that up?" she asked.

"Made it myself, I'm an ex-ESF sniper we all use customised gear as we never know what job we'd be going on next so you learn pretty fast that you need to have a toy for all occasions, with this I can modify it on the fly with just a few tweaks and by manipulating the dials goes from pop a raiders skull open at eight hundred meters without so much as a ghost's fart of sound to cut through a Mirelurk Queen's arse at a mile away," Fuller said patting his sniper rifle proudly.

"Ex-ESF? Didn't think there was such a thing?" Mouse said.

"Honestly kinda shocked that you've heard of us at all, most don't know who or what we are and that's kinda the way we liked it," Fuller said somewhat dodging the question and Mouse nodded.

"In this line of work, it pays to know all the players you are likely to run into or piss off whichever comes first, already run afoul of the Brotherhood's equivalent of you guys the Crimson Knights from the midwestern lot quite while back when I was doing a long-range run and those fuckers were no joke I can tell you, they hit us like a fucking sledgehammer made of pure fuck you, if it hadn't been for this here suit I'd have never made it out, we lost a lot of good people that day, killed ten heavies and the four synths we were escorting, I was the only one to make it out, so yeah I've seen what you special forces guys can do when pushed," Mouse said with what sounded like a note of reverence in her voice.

"Those guys are yahoos compared to the ESF, if it had been the ESF that hit you not only would have you never seen us coming but there would have been no survivors that I can tell you now, stealth suit or no stealth suit," Fuller said trying not to sound too proud of his unit's abilities.

"Tone down the patriotism a bit Fuller," Fletcher said in his ear and he saw Mouse shoot him a glance that was obviously somewhat suspicious by the way her head moved.

"You talk like you never left?" she said and Fuller shrugged.

"Hard to forget that life you know? It's one of those units you join for life, once in always in or so I thought anyway, the bullshit just got too much for me and I just up and left, made it look like an accident but they still managed to see through it, still kinda fresh in my head you know?" he said and Mouse seemed to accept that with a nod.

"Yeah I hear you there, I'm ex-NCR myself, used to be one of their rangers, just got so fed up with the bullshit and the corruption that in the end I just said fuck it and bugged out looking for something that actually meant something you know?" she said and he nodded.

"And I bet you still wake up some days and it feels like your right back in there where you started right?" he said and she nodded.

"Yeah true that I think with ex-soldiers like us a part of us never truly leaves," she said making him breathe a slight sigh of relief and nod in agreement.

"So what made you want to join the Railroad?" she asked curiously.

"All the places I've been around the wastes and all the fuckers I've put down the thing that made me sicker than anything was seeing all the slavery, the shit we just keep doing to our fellow man makes me sick to our stomach and then this, these scientists make synthetic life and I mean life not a fucking clock work Tonka toy like a protectron but living breathing people no different from you or me other than you know the obvious and what's the first thing they do when they give them sentience? Enslave them, so they give them the ability to think for themselves and to feel everything we can and then presto slap some fucking shackles on them so now not only are they trying to figure out their place in a world which is probably going to hate them on the principle of what they are but they get the full range of emotions to be fully experienced and appreciate the misery they are having inflicted on them as slaves, yeah fuck that," Fuller said and Mouse shot him what he could fee was a surprised glance.

"I knew I was gonna like you kid, that's pretty much exactly how I think about it too, that's pretty much exactly while I joined up too, I would see it so fucking much with the NCR, we would be facing off with Ceasers Legion all the time you heard of them?" she asked and he nodded, oh he'd heard of them lot alright.

"Yeah, thought so well then you know they got themselves a whole fucking army of slaves and what does the NCR are doing? Well it wasn;t steam roller the fuck right over those slave taking fucks I can tell you that for free, its also kinda the reason I had to get out of there, I kinda well sorta blew the fuck out of three slave camps and freed abot three hundred of them took out a whole batallion of Legionares as well, that'll teach them to have so many explosives in one place well long story short made me public enemy number one and rather than back me up the NCR decided to throw me to the fucking wolves and denounce me as a rogue element when they should have been chapioning what I did, they could have easily been holding it up and saying here people look at what the NCR can do for you come and join us, but no their poletitions freaked out about retaliation and yeah I had to get the fuck out of dodge, fucking Legion hunted me for quite a while till they got sick of picking up the bodies of their hunter teams I left in my wake, now I'm here and I'll be damned if I just stand by and let these institue fucks just create a new breed of human just to slap chains around their wrists, not on my watch," she said with such fire and passion that Fuller really couldn't help but be impressed.

"Known a few Ranges in my time good bunch of guys and gals, hardcore every last one of them, really know how to get the job done," Fuller said deciding to stoke her ego.

"Aww didn't know you cared so much, you're making me choke up over here," McKay said in his ear making him clasp his hands behind his back and flip the bird to the following invisible watchers.

Mouse thankfully didn't notice and just nodded, "Good soldiers caught up in a tidal wave of political bullshit that drowned them in red tape and stopped them from doing what was right at every turn and when we were given the chance however rare, same said politicians would be the first in to bask in the glory and claim it for themselves," she said and he nodded, that was a story he knew well.

"Sounds a lot like the Enclave head shed that one," he said and she nodded.

"See I knew you'd get it, I always had a good sense for people, can spot the good ones at a thousand yards, well the bad ones they never even see me," she said making him chuckle and pat his rifle.

"That's a feeling I know well," she said making her laugh.

"Yeah I and you are gonna get along just fine Clawbait," she said making him laugh now.

About two hours later just as it was getting properly dark the pair were on an overpass looking down onto a diner below them, a break in the crumbling cement gave them a good line of sight down onto the place.

"Alright that's the place here's the plan, you look like you can handle that rifle pretty well, so you'll be on overwatch, you're job is going to be pretty simple, put as many of those clockwork fuckers on the ground as you can while I use the distraction to slip in and open up the underground safe house, I'll slip the synths out and circle around to meet up with back at that gas station we cleared a mile back down the road, from there we'll take the synths on to the RV point ourselves and hand them off to another team who will get them the rest of the way out of this place," she said.

Fuller was tempted to ask where they were headed to but he got the feeling that given how seriously these guys took plausible deniability and operational security Mouse probably wouldn't have any more clue than he did to protect both them and the synths they were running.

Fuller gave her a thumbs up and flicked down the bipod on the base of the geauss sniper rifle before settling it against his shoulder and adjusting the power dials, he wanted enough power to take the targets down at this range but not so much as to punch clean through it and the building behind it.

Mouse vanished from sight and would have obviously begun moving down to the diner while Fuller swept his scope over the building and instantly he began to pick out the figures wandering about, they were everything that Mouse had described them as.