Radiance

Chapter 76: A Knight's Tale.

Nighttime in the wasteland was both a peaceful and a frightening time all rolled into one, walking around out here in the dark while it could be a truly wondrous thing it could also be a harrowing one as rather a lot of the creatures of the wastes liked to hunt at night, so it was not exactly for the faint of heart.

But as a fully badged knight of the Brotherhood of Steel Adam Hill didn't exactly have the luxury of surrendering to fear, especially when his elite recon squad had been tasked with scouting the enemy's forward operating positions.

So far everything they had thrown at these so-called Avians or Screaming Eagles as a lot of the soldiers had come to start calling them due to the noise they tended to make when they attacked had failed miserably.

They were incredibly smart and cunning for abominations he had to give them that, when Paladin Ramone had read the brief to the four-man recon team Sigma they had sat and listened intently.

Apparently, the creatures had appeared rather swiftly when the Brotherhood had started exploring the ruins to the northeast of Boston, it was believed that their territory was located somewhere in the hill further north but it was impossible to tell exactly where as every attempt to push deeper into the territory had been met with incredibly fierce resistance and these were not ferals throwing stones or spears, they were not only using ballistic weapons but now they had weapons captured from fallen brothers and sisters as well.

Hell, some of the rumours floating around both the airport and the Prydwyn were that they'd even made off with some of their power armour as well though why creatures that fly would want hundreds of pounds of steel plate was beyond his scope of understanding.

"So in short it is our job to move behind their lines and to tag any and all possible camps they may have in the area, we are unable to use vertibirds in the area as they have gotten incredibly good at taking them out of the sky, last reports say we've lost four in the last week alone, their snipers are next fucking level and they always go for the engines so you don't even get a chance to shoot back," Paladin Ramone had said flicking the button on the projector to show the pictures of the crashed vertibirds that had not only been downed but picked clean before recovery teams could arrive to extract any survivors.

"What happened to our brothers and sisters?" Hill had asked and the Paladin had flicked the button to show stripped bodies that had once had power armour on but were now laid out in their uniforms in a row at the crash site.

"All I can say is at least they seem to have some respect for the dead, they don't desecrate the bodies and they always and I mean this always leave them out for collection, they seem to have some kind of ritual where they cross the arms over their chest and place little rocks over the eyes, hell despite stripping them of any and all weapons they always leave the dog tags for us to collect so they can be added to the great chain," he had said in a deep growl.

"Awfully respectful for savage abominations wouldn't you say, Paladin? Are you sure they are non-humans?" Hill had asked and the Paladin who was a tall broad man standing in at 6'3 ft and about twenty stone of solid muscle just shrugged.

"At this point Knight Hill your guess is as good as mine, we've never captured a live one as any we do down seem to have these incendiary grenades or devices on them and they burn themselves to ash so there is very little left by the time we reach them for our scribes to analyse, but from what remains we have collected they do appear to be non-human and you know what that means," he said and Hill sighed heavily and nodded.

The Brotherhood after the takeover of Elder Maxim had had a very strict non-human policy, in that they were to cleanse the wasteland of all non-human life that was a threat, they were simply seen as abominations of nature and freaks of radiation or the FEV in the case of the super mutants and a few other choice species.

Now in the case of the mutants Hill could understand given their incredibly aggressive nature and their tendency to either eat people or to capture them and turn them into other mutants yeah a kill on sight policy made sense.

But in his opinion a lot of other species simply didn't deserve that fate as they didn't exactly ask to be born the way they were, they were simply trying to live the same as him or any of them so what right did they have to simply exterminate them?

That having been thought it was never said aloud as it was an incredibly unpopular opinion within the Brotherhood and simply giving voice to such things could have very harsh punishments for the speaker, at the very least it would get you shunned by your Brothers and Sisters and in this world, they were all you really had so it was very wise to hold one's tongue.

Hill himself was fairly new to the Brotherhood and had shipped here from the Captial Wasteland only three months ago having been a card-carrying brother now only two years, he was positively a pup in most of their eyes.

But that having been said they had definitely seen promise in him because he had risen through the ranks to full-blown Knight very quickly before having been appointed to one of the Brotherhood's coveted recon teams who were hailed as special forces even within such an elite fighting force.

As a heavy weapon specialist and combat engineer Hill's skills had been in great demand as he had a very distinct talent for both using the largest most deadly guns you could hand him as well as being able to fix things like power armour suits even under field conditions or even under fire as he had proven more than once in the Captial wasteland.

So given his skill set it was only a matter of time before the Brotherhood put him to good use and true to form that had done just that by appointing him to one of their recon teams commanded by Paladin Ramone.

Now the Paladin was a very firm but fair man for the most part at least when it came to humans, he was kinda indifferent to non-Brotherhood for the most part choosing like many of his brothers and sisters to simply ignore the struggles of the everyday civilians for the most part, which was kinda ironic when you thought about its as he like most of the new generation had all been among them not all that long ago.

But it was with non-humans that his bigotry and hatred really shone, he seemed to have a real hatred for Ghouls and while he wouldn't do anything to the talking ones where people could see more than a few stories were floating about of some of the things he had done when he thought people couldn't and to say they disgusted Hill was an understatement.

It was something that truly disappointed and disgusted Hill as it was an attitude that was all too common within the ranks of the Brotherhood, they were supposed to stand for something, to be better and to give people hope, they were supposed to protect people and to defend the innocent, but so many simply used it as an excuse to get their hands on some top tier power armour and weapons so they could exert their will and dominance on other people, they were nothing more than armoured bullies.

Now that was not to say that the entire Brotherhood was like that far from it really, but the fact that people like this were not weeded out and made an example of disgusted Hill, they were supposed to be a beacon of hope to the everyday people of the wastes, a shining example of what humanity could do and achieve even in the direst of circumstances, but in some cases, they were no better than the raiders they fought against.

In his opinion Paladin Ramone was steadily becoming one of these people and it both scared and angered him but given his position under his command there was very little he could do as the Brotherhood tenants regarding rank and command were very clear.

So now as he found himself strolling through the wastes in formation with the rest of the team Sigma Hill found himself wondering what they would do if they did indeed find one of the camps of these so-called Avian people.

Looking down at his hands he adjusted the position of his modified Gatteling laser and he checked the twin fusion cores sticking out of the side of it to make sure that the seal was tight, all seemed well.

The gun was one of his own design that used some highly modified emitters to generate more powerful beams without using much more in the way of power to generate them and combing that with some very tight focusing lenses and crystals give it a very tight field of fire, it also gave it a very distinct green colour using the higher power emitters.

"If you keep playing with that thing you'll go blind Hill," a voice said from his rear right suddenly over his comms.

It belonged to Knight Sharp the team's medic and explosive expert, who was the woman in her late twenties who when she wasn't wearing her T60F power armour was actually rather attractive or at least in Hill's opinion she was.

"Too late for that he's already blind deaf and dumb," another voice said this one belonging to Knight Smith another woman in her late twenties said from the rear of the staggered line they were walking in.

Smith was the team's sniper and was one of the Bane's of Hill's existence, she was a consummate perfectionist and was forever in his workshop with her heavily customized Plasma sniper rifle claiming that either the barrel or the optics were misaligned which would result in him stripping the weapon down only to find fuck all wrong with it, the running joke was that she was hot for him and just did as an excuse to spend time with the young Knight.

But while Smith was a good-looking woman she was not hill's cup of tea in the personality department, she was loud and she was pushy, if she didn't get what she wanted she was incredibly diva-like, throwing tantrums until people just gave in and bowed to her wishes.

Infact if it wasn't for the fact that in the field she was an incredible shot and one if not the best of the Brotherhood's sniper school graduates, as well as highly professional Hill, was under no illusions that she would have been busted down or shit-canned all together by now.

"Have to be to be a part of this team," Hill shot back and he got two snorted laughs in return and one growl that he knew had come from the Paladin.

"Can it the lot of you this is not a nature hike, out here the fucking wildlife will eat your ass as soon as look at you and not in the way that Smith is hoping Hill will either," Paladin Ramone growled earning him a few sniggers and a groan of frustration.

"Yes Paladin," they chorused together as they tightened up the line and continued on their way.

As he was moving Hill felt a slight pull in his right leg, it seemed that the actuators were sticking slightly again and he made a mental note to check it the first opportunity he got, as the team's combat engineer one of his duties was to look after the team's power armour suits as well as to modify them so that not only combat effective but were as top tier as they could get with what they had.

It was a constant source of pride for him that team Sigma's armour was not only top of the line but was very obvious, it all supported matte black coating to make it very low profile and also stopped the rocket launchers that the mutants loved to use from locking on to them.

It also hosted a whole plethora of added extras like jet packs, stealth boy systems, thermal targeting overlays, radscrubbers and reinforced and calibrated shocks to increase their carry weights for the week-long patrols to name but a few.

One of the things he had been working on lately and his team were the first to make use of was kinetic shielding designed around some force field technology he had gotten a look at lately that one of his friends in the Scribes had let him get a copy of, it worked by generating a field around the skin of the armour that when struck by a high energy projectile from either a ballistic weapon or an energy weapon would dissipate its energy and rob it of it so that it barely had fuck all left by the time it hit the reactive outer plates.

Now, this was not to be mistaken with a deflection energy shield which was a different concept, whereas that type of shield worked by acting like a barrier which the projectile struck like an added armour layer, this type worked like a web of energy that when the projectile struck it got stuck and slowed down, kinda like trying to fly through treacle towards your target, this meant that when the projectile hit it was nothing more than a light tap.

The benefit of this system over a deflector shield was that because it wasn't trying to repel any of the projectiles it was a lot harder to break even with energy weapons, plus it couldn't be overloaded as it didn't use any more energy to slow anything, it simply generated the web shielding all around you and when something hit it got stuck and had all the energy sucked out of it, simple really.

But that wasn't to say that this system was perfect pretty far from it really as while that system worked all well and dandy against standard ballistic and energy projectiles against explosives it offered next to no protection other than slowing shrapnel from the blast, as things like sabot rounds could still do their job if they were two-stage.

Though fortunately for them super mutants very rarely had access to things like sabot rounds or even true anti-armour rounds, the heaviest things you tended to see them with were a variety of rocket launchers, the odd grenade launcher, miniguns (which where were useless against this system), or every so often one of them would work out how to use a Fatman launcher rather than just run at the team holding a primed shell to hit them with it.

As he watched Paladin Ramone walking along ahead of him he had often found himself fantasizing about installing either a kill switch into the man's armour or an overload that would send his fusion core into a meltdown so that if he ever did anything like the stories he'd heard whispered about him he could put a stop to it and given the man had absolutely zero technical skill when it came to the armour or the weapons he knew he could get away with it as well, it was only his sense of honour and belief in the Brotherhood that stopped him from doing something he saw as cowardly but it didn't stop him fantasizing about it.

This patrol and scouting mission was meant to last for roughly a week possibly two if they found anything, though their mission was not to engage the enemy but to simply observe them and to mark any promising targets for the Brotherhood with pulsers so that their strike teams would know where to hit.

As they walked Hill began to wonder about these so-called Avians, like where did they come from and how did they come into being?

Was it simply a case of the Radiation had evolved them into what they were now and if so how had it done so?

Had it increased the rate of evolution through mutation or had there been different factors involved kinda like the FEV did to bring the mutants into being?

These and a million more questions were swirling through his head as he panned his weapon back and forth across the open ground of the wastes.

To him, he didn't believe that just because they were human and these creatures were not that that gave them any right to just simply up and wipe them out because they didn't agree with them.

Hell from what he'd read in the reports these so call beasts were a hell of a lot more coordinated and unified than humanity was, he certainly wasn't reading any reports of them up and killing each other and stealing each other's shit that was for sure.

So what if their actions simply pushed them too far and they suddenly decided you know what these human things are unworthy of our restraint, let's wipe them all out and cleanse the wastes of their kind?

A lot of innocent humans could lose their lives if something like that broke out, then there was another question that was rattling around in the back of his brain, what if they ran into this group he'd read a few classified reports on, the Free Peoples of the Wastes?

From what he'd read they were a human and non-human coalition that seemed to be striving for peace between both human and non-human species so that they could push the world forwards not only a lasting peace but a mutually beneficial future.

Now while he had to admit they really did pitch a nice song here and hell some of the things contained within that report like wiping the infamous Paradise Falls off the map really showed a dedication to their cause, he did find himself wondering if they had the right end of the stick, was peace even possible at this point?

But then he supposed it was nice to see at least someone willing to try, it was certainly better than the current path everything was on because at this rate there would be no more humanity left to protect either from itself or even others.

Though he had to love the irony of a bunch of non-humans being willing to step up and to try and protect humanity when people were just so willing to try and wipe them off the face of the planet, his own organization included, hell they were the ones leading the way on it just look at what they were doing out here right now.

As far as he was concerned these so-called avian people we simply living in this area and they had come wandering in looking to take whatever tech they could lay their hands on and these people were simply defending their territory and homes.

But the Brotherhood didn't care as far as they were concerned they were non-human and that made them extinguishable without consequence.

It was this line of thinking that was really getting to Hill as he liked to think of himself as a compassionate being with a healthy respect for life.

It also disappointed him as it really wasn't the Brotherhood that he'd heard tales of either, they were supposed to be not only champions of the people but their defenders as well but in this circumstance, they were not defending anyone they were aggressing.

But that having been said he was also a good and loyal soldier so while he didn't agree with the orders he still followed them because as much as people like to think soldiers run around getting the choice of which order to follow and which to ignore in reality it doesn't work like that, it was at its core an army and an army works on one simple rule, obedience till death.

Suddenly Paladin Ramone stopped dead and held up his hand above his shoulder in a balled fist causing them all to freeze solid and crouch to activate their stealth modules.

Suddenly every single one of them took on an eerie red glow as their targeting HUD overlay displayed them through the stealth fields so they didn't accidentally shoot one another.

"What have you got Paladin?" Hill asked in a low hiss and the Paladin pointed towards his front left and there in the distance Hill saw a faint glow coming from what looked to be a cave set into a large cliff face.

"We must be getting close as that must be a guard post or scout party, it's too small to be anything like the main force," Paladin Ramon said but something was bothering Hill.

"Sir, don't you think it's a bit odd that they are lighting fires at night? I mean from all we've seen them do these guys are not idiots or savages and lighting fore at night really doesn't strike me as tactically a sound idea, something's off here," Hill said zooming in his range finder on the cliff face trying to get a better view on it.

"We're pretty deep behind their lines so I'm willing to bet they are not expecting any kind of trouble here, let's get closer and take a proper look shall we?" the Paladin said and the team nodded falling back into formation and moving forwards slowly.