Chapter 19 Sara

Sara had been on standby since noon. No more than thirty seconds away from wheels up at any time. Standard operating procedure if any Recon element missed two consecutive check ins.

She’d done the required maintenance to keep the T-60 power armour fighting fit. Found time to clean her unique, old world, pistol ‘The Wolverine'. Giving the aluminium body and the interchangeable, lower calibre, barrel the attention it needed. Then set about sharpening her blades, knowing how deeply it irked her Lancer Val, the best pilot in Excalibur Outpost. And one of the few bright spots in a posting this far east.

Val had been out here just as long, checking her Vertibird methodically. She’d tested the twin engines, aligned the triple, carbon fibre mesh rotor blades on each side. Hosed out the open cabin. Cleaned the toughened glass, along with the lightweight hull. Even checked the tire pressure in the retractable wheel struts. She sat in an old chair reading a tattered book, flight suit tied at the waist, helmet and jacket within reach.

Sara pushed her repurposed rotor blade along the grindstone, scraping it slower than she needed to. Then switched to its twin and did the same. Val didn’t react. It annoyed her to see the blades reshaped into twin swords, but it annoyed her more how effective they were.

Lightweight, sharp, durable. And thanks to a clever locking hilt system of Sara’s own design, capable of quickly attaching end to end to form a double edged, six foot blade. Or side by side like a broadsword, or dual wielding them in each hand. She ground the other side and Val broke her silence. “They’re sharp enough.” Got her, Sara thought, now to push her.

“If you hadn’t of crashed,” Sara ground an edge. “I wouldn’t have needed to break them off to save us.” The lightweight blades and their determination made short work of a lot of ghouls that day. Val still pretended to read. With one more agonisingly long scrape, she broke, throwing down the book, and nearly leaping through the cabin to half yell at her.

“First of all I did not crash. You’re trigger happy ass brought a building down around us and I went into a controlled descent…then crashed.” They laughed to drive back the terror of that day.

If it wasn’t for their uniforms and their ranks, it’d be tough to tell Val and Sara apart. Both in their late twenties. Both with regulation side cut hairstyles, ponytails tied back. Both blonde, although Val’s was darker, and both very good at what they did.

The hand cranked siren from the control tower whirred into life and the difference between the two women became apparent. Val dove into pilot’s seat while Sara hauled herself up and into her open power armour. Expertly pressing on the foot pedals to make the thundering steel suit bound into life before it even sealed, let alone pressurised.

At a slow, for them, time of fifteen seconds they were airborne. “Echo, Valkyrie, wheels up, over.” Val operated the radio, still doing her pre-flight checks in mid-air. Seconds here meant minutes out there, with Brothers under fire.

“Solid copy Valkyrie, good hunting. Ad Victoriam.”

With the turbo rotor engines locked in the forward position the Vertibird zipped through the air. Flying over the blood red canopy, the winding Green River. The ubiquitous burnt remains and ruined buildings. All left below as Sara sat in the cabin. Keeping the weight of the power armour centred during the speeding flight towards the emergency radio signal. Val radioed Excalibur Outpost. “Echo Omega, Valkyrie, how copy?”

“Solid copy Valkyrie, send it.”

“My screen shows signal lost, request bearing, over.” The outpost went quiet, calculating a new bearing for them to follow. Losing an emergency signal was never a good sign. Val tipped the Vertibird into a bank. Veering towards the ruined City on the horizon that within minutes was underneath them.

With a familiar clunk, accompanied by a slowing of speed and a drop in altitude, the turbo prop rotors locked upright. Val signalled Sara to take her position on the door mounted minigun. She moved smoothly, not easily done in the mechanised suit of armour. She gripped the gun handles with the robotic, lifelike, mechanised hands. Slid it across, locked it in place, and aimed it down towards the empty streets. Scanning for any sign of their Brothers below.

Val fettled the twin rotors to keep them steady, another thing not easily done by a single pilot in a bird built for two. Then spoke through the comm system. “Tempest, signal weak but we’re close. Any visual?”

“Negative Valkyrie.” Sara replied, her voice echoing slightly inside the advanced helmet. “Go quiet, then give me a nice pass, low and slow.” Val engaged the sound dampening mode. A hindrance for most pilots, not for her, and dropped to near rooftop levels.

Sara used the control grips in her actual hands, protected by the thick steel forearms, to quickly activate the helmet’s night vision. Visibility felt like a costly sacrifice. Always an issue with power armour, even the T-60, but the light amplification more than made up for it. Darkness replaced with grainy green. The visual systems scanning, ready to highlight movement with a simple red square on the heads up display in front of her eyes.

“Got ‘em, four blocks west, signal strong and moving. Hold tight, this is gonna hurt.” Sara hated it when Val said that. She braced herself as her anti g under armour inflated around her legs. Forcing the blood to stay in her brain as Val hurled the Vertibird into a tight, banking turn. Zipping Sara past ruins and collapsed roofing, alarmingly fast and low. Even for the best pilot in Excalibur Outpost.

“Movement two o’clock low.” Val turned the bird on a cap, twisting the engines against each other in a way that threatened to tear the airframe in half. The visual systems in the advanced helmet highlighted the movement in red squares. Showing her the reason for the emergency broadcast. “Greenskins, times two, they’re chasing someone. No shot, no shot.” Sara learned long ago how unfriendly ‘friendly’ fire was, she trusted Val to find her an angle.

As the bird turned in another high g manoeuvre Sara saw the briefest glimpse of the horror below. She’d seen it before. Two mutants down, and what she knew to be her friend Alice. Stripped naked, desecrated, charred and half eaten. She funnelled her grief and rage through well-travelled channels. More determined than ever to rid the world of the abomination, no matter what.

The mutant ahead stopped in a junction, its terrified quarry lost momentarily. Then it turned and bolted from view, just as the minigun spun up. She lost it in a narrow alley.

Val climbed and banked, giving her just enough time to sight in on the second, slower, wounded mutant. The pilot expertly rolled the bird just enough to bring the ruthlessly simple iron sight to bear. Sara squeezed the grip trigger. Instantaneously tightening the mechanical finger on the firing button. The six barrels spooled up, ready to unload three thousand rounds a minute, but she stopped herself just in time.

A tall, muscular, man, moving incredibly fast, burst from the alley knocking the greenskin down, and running past. Something about the man drew her focus just long enough to realise what she’d seen. Tight blue suit and something on his arm. She’d been briefed on what to look for many times, and there it was. “Shit I lost him Val, find him, find him.”

“Copy.” Val used her mark one eyeballs to look out from the convex bubble window by her seat. A tense moment of silence filled the Vertibird, Sara hunting greenskins, Val scanning for a man in blue suit. “Got him, old bar, end of the block, and he’s got company.”

Val put the bird into a sharp dive, pulling up and flicking them round at the last possible moment. Lining Sara up and illuminating the greenskin in the powerful spotlight. The night vision shut off automatically. Sara saw into the old bar through the partially collapsed roof.

The blue suited man stood, knife and hammer in hand, screaming back at the abomination screaming at him. She found the briefest of clear shots as the mutant turned, its lizard brain drawn by the light, she took it.

Finally given permission the minigun spun into life. The electric motor drove the six barrels round rapidly, spitting a five millimetre stream of lead that cut the creature into a bloody mess. Reducing it to a pulped pile of overgrown, still twitching, muscle on the floor.

Not even a pilot as highly skilled as Val could fight the inertia they’d accrued. Now driving the bird over the old bar as the last remaining mutant ran towards the remains of its identical genetic copy.

Most pilots would try to fight the movement, get the bird back on target. Val wasn’t most pilots, and the benefit of working hand in gauntlet over the last five years showed.

Even before starting to climb Sara slid the minigun back and took a moment to gauge the mutants lumbering pace. She stepped from the bird into nothing, without fear or hesitation. Sara fell the fifteen feet or so, fast. Smashing through the wooden ceiling and landing the heavy steel armour like a bomb of solid mass. Crushing the abomination beneath mechanised feet.

The inbuilt shock absorbing pistons did their job, making the drop seem like a mild bump. She stood, scanning for the blue suited man, finding him in wide eyed terror on the floor. The emergency beacon clipped to his belt, knife and hammer still gripped in white knuckled hands. Her training kicked in, seeing he had technology she’d been tasked to retrieve at all costs. Sara raised the heavy robotic foot and kicked him, knocking him out cold.

Sara carried the unconscious man out to the landed Vertibird. His weight little issue for the power armour, and dumped him in the cabin. Val took his belt and strapped him down like cargo. “He’s out cold, he ain’t waking up soon.” Sara said as she climbed onto the gunner seat.

“If he does he’s in for one hell of a ride.” Val was right, face down in the back of the bird, unable to move. If he did wake up he’d pass out from shock alone. They dusted off, heading back to the mutant camp. Hoping against hope that someone survived, but knowing they would have never given the beacon to a wastrel if there were any other way.

Circling with the spotlight on, she could make out Alice. Still hanging above the smouldering fire. Michaels, pinned under rubble, a mutant foot sized hole in his back. And a pile of gnawed limbs that used to be Marham. She knew most of him was lost to the abomination, a crude euphemism for a harrowing fate. “Val, patch me in.” The pilot flipped switches and plugged in a comm cable. “Echo Omega, Echo Omega, this is Tempest, how copy?”

“Solid copy Tempest, send it.”

“Romeo element K.I.A, greenskins times four, all cleansed. Beacon found in possession of unknown male.” She paused, knowing it wasn’t too late to dump the man out. Knowing what the thing on his arm could mean, but her lifetime of training took over. “Possible victor delta, I repeat, possible victor delta. Request permission to recover the fallen, over.” An uncommon silence followed her formality of a request.

“Negative Tempest, RTB ASAP.” Before Sara even needed to signal Val flashed a thumbs up and started waggling the comm cable. “Tempes..in the blin…did not..opy…your las..” Both of them knew when to bend the rules. It made them better at what they did, and made it easier to sleep at night. A familiar gravelly voice came over the comm, her commander, her elder, her father.

“Tempest, Excalibur actual, return to base.” Val didn’t even wait for Sara’s response. She put the bird in a climb and locked the rotors forward. There was no bending a direct order from the elder, that was the law of the Brotherhood. The chain that binds.

“Solid copy, RTB, Tempest out.”

They were met at the landing pad by an incinerator equipped recovery squad, and the big three. Head Scribe Collins, short, thin, wearing the impractical robes that befit his rank. Lead Scout Marks, his closely cropped Mohawk hair, matched with black fatigues, signifying him as part of the elite Recon unit. And Elder Maxwell, her father, their leader.

The Vertibird landed, keeping the rotors at speed to get the recovery squad back out. Sara waited for the medic to get the blue suited man onto a stretcher. To her surprise he looked half awake, at least he did until they stuck him in the neck with a med-x injector. The medics were too hurried, Sara too focused on how to get on the recovery squad. No one else noticed the brief message on the pipboy screen. *Sedation detected. Countermeasures engaged.*

“I should head out with them.” Sara tried not to sound like she was asking, it didn’t matter. The big three had already started following the stretcher to the sub level infirmary.

“I want you in on this, five minutes.” The elder didn’t even look at her, not even a hint of compromise. She hadn’t really expected much. She knew the potential implications of the thing on the unconscious man’s arm.

Val took the recovery squad back out to the horror as Sara ejected gracefully from her armour. Her toned, trained, muscles used to the awkward method of pulling up and swinging out as the frame opened up. She took a moment to stretch, her bones more jolted from the fall than she realised. She sat on the ground, leaning against the steel legs, wondering if she made the right decision. Wondering if hurling the blue suited man from flying Vertibird to a swift, painless, death might have served the greater good.

Most of the pre-war outpost’s critical areas were built underground. The quarters, command offices, the mess, and the infirmary. As old world military bases went Excalibur was pretty small. Less an operational base, more a secure warehousing facility. A weigh station for cargo and little else. Which was exactly what drew them here five years ago, following intel so old it’d become near myth.

Sara entered the infirmary, seeing the unconscious man stripped naked and strapped to a medical table. His left arm extended out, being examined by a pair of scribes under the watchful eye of Head Scribe Collins.

Marks and her father sat on stools by the vertical data screens extending from a desk. The elder may have ordered her in, but her father brought her cold water and hot coffee, sweet, just the way she liked it. “We haven’t seen greenskins this far north in years.” Sara wanted to shift focus from the naked, unconscious man she’d brought in.

“We’ll run extra patrols.” The elder wasn’t in the mood to change the subject. “Drink your coffee, Collins should have something soon.” Sara looked at her father, seeing the toll the already overdue five year mission had taken on him. His beard greying, his eyes heavy from lack of sleep, wearing only simple fatigues. Things had only gotten worse since his husband, her ‘uncle’ left.

She drank her cool water, listening to the steady beeps from the machines monitoring the naked man’s heart rate. “I found a release catch.” One of the scribes crouched under the extended arm, reached up and touched the strange device. An electric snap filled the air. Shocking the crouching scribe, sending him tumbling into the corner.

Eager to earn approval from the miserly Collins, the other scribe pulled the sedated right arm over. He used that to try and operate the sleek, jet black device. Before anyone could stop him he touched the man’s hand to his own device, triggering another, louder, electric snap. This time shocking them both. Sending the scribe to floor, twitching, and stopping the heart of the unconscious man.

Sara leapt to aid the scribe, ignoring the ominous steady tone from the monitoring equipment. She stopped as she saw the terrifying message on the arm mounted screen.

*User death detected. Self-destruct initiated.*

The message switched to a countdown from fifteen seconds. A panel in the seemingly solid housing retracted, revealing something that looked an awful lot like a fusion core. And it began venting coolant, approaching critical mass. She’d seen cores blow in armour explosions or Vertibird crashes. If it blew in here dozens would die, instantly.

“ROOM IS HOT! EVAC NOW!” Sara screamed then bolted into action as alarms sounded and everyone but her father ran from the room. Thinking on her feet, she threw a thick, rubber, autopsy apron over the unconscious man. Covering his chest. Then she struck him over the heart as hard as she could. Again and again she struck the muscular chest, desperate to start the heart inside to save them all.

Sara glanced at the screen, seven seconds, she balled her fists together and struck one last time with everything she had. The ominous, continuous, tone from the heartbeat monitor returned to a steady sounding beep. The panel closed and the screen went back to black. With no one else in the room the elder felt free to be her father and he embraced her tightly.

Sara and her father returned to the infirmary. After taking a few minutes to reassure the troops it had been a false alarm, followed by a bracing walk topside. Finding only the head scribe and lead scout in the room. “I have a preliminary report Elder Maxwell.” Collins looked about as pleased as Sara had ever seen him, which is to say, not very.

“First his gear, wastrel made, better than average. Almost brand new.” Collins ignored the belt, gun, and hammer. “This, in conjunction with his pale skin, suggests he’s not been above ground long.” The head scribe passed the shiny blue suit to the elder who prodded and pulled at the material. “No number on the jumpsuit, which is odd, as is the non-Newtonian panels. We’ve seen it in combat armour back west, but not this thin.” Her father handed her the suit, it felt incredibly smooth.

“Now for the man himself.” Collins walked over to the screens. “We ran his blood, normal, common antibodies so he was likely vaccinated. He’s suffering from dehydration, mild heat stroke. Nothing fluids and rest won’t fix. Aside from that he’s ostensibly the healthiest person I’ve ever seen.” Sara looked at the man’s impressive muscles, trying to remain objective. “No surgery scars, no tumours, practically no rads, again leadi—”

“Leading us to believe he lived underground, yes.” The elder sounded usually impatient. “What about the tech?” Collins didn’t look like he got interrupted often.

“We’ve seen pipboys before. Most are little more than glorified terminals. Clunky inventory management systems. But this…” He opened the emergency beacon, removing something from the battery slot and handing it to the elder. He examined it, twisting the end, propelling copper pins from the front.

“Is this a wireless four pin?” The elder sounded unsure, again, unusually so.

“Yes, we’ve never seen one this small. Our tests show it transmits, receives, transfers power, data.” Collins seemed ready to move on, but Sara spoke up first,

“So without that we wouldn’t have got the signal?”

“No. As for the pipboy itself.” Sara wanted to press the point further but her father gave her a look that said he understood. Collins continued. “We can’t get near it. Impervious to x-ray, and stuck in a defensive posture. However the x-rays showed something, well, interesting.” The elder stood and walked slowly to the data screen as Collins brought up a full body scan of the naked man’s skeleton.

“What is that?”

“We don’t know.”

Collins looked displeased, like those words left a bad taste in his mouth. Sara could see the x-ray image. Every inch of bone had a strange texture to it, wrapped, woven. Like her carbon fibre blades, only on a microscopic scale. “Scribe Morris is searching the Archive, he has a hunch it’s similar to bone grafts for high end pre-war prosthetics, but nothing on this scale. It’s some kind of advanced nano-filament. His bones are pretty much unbreakable. Marrow shielded from radiation. It’s a work of genius frankly.” The head scribe, a man of high intelligence himself, sounded impressed. The elder sounded frustrated.

“Forget what it is, how did this happen?”

“It grew into him from the device, slowly, over years.” Collins scrolled to the x-ray of a knee. “See here, that’s the Epiphyseal plate, the growth plate, and it’s covered too. Meaning it must of started before puberty. Any discomfort likely dismissed as mere growing pains. And then there’s this.”

Collins switched to a close up, side view, of the man’s skull. “See here, where it’s thicker, that’s over the cerebrum. The part of the brain that governs movement, vision, problem solving. I don’t think it’s simply protective, I think it’s more…functional.” Sara thought about how fast the man seemed to move, but kept it to herself. Her father’s manner bothering her more and more. The elder stood staring at the unconscious man who told them so much without speaking.

“Options?” Sara stayed quiet. Not ignoring the elder’s question, just aware that a paladin shouldn’t weigh in before senior command officers.

“Just cut it off.” If it wasn’t for foul the body odour Recon wore like a medal you wouldn’t have known Lead Scout Marks was in the room. It took a different kind of breed to be Recon, out there, alone all that time. It took an even rarer breed to command them.

“I doubt you could.” Collins sounded dismissive, at best.

“I meant his arm.” Marks drew his heavy, angled, blade, ready to simply walk in there and hack the man’s arm off.

“So did I, were you not listening Lead Scout Marks?” Collins didn’t wait for an answer. “Elder Maxwell, more study is needed.” Sara knew he was going to say that. “I suggest we induce a coma and run more tests.”

“So let me get this straight,” It was Sara’s turn to speak, and she made her feelings plain. “This guy crawls out of hole in the ground weeks, maybe days ago. Goes up against four greenskins to save strangers, our Brothers, and his reward for such gallantry is a coma or a severed arm?” No one spoke, yet she sensed her father smile, even though his back was turned, still focused on the screens. “At least hear him out, we don’t even know his name.”

“Integration could be useful.” Marks had a flair for questioning.

“Keeping him sedated is the safer option.”

“He’s sedated now and nearly took out half the base!” Sara’s patience for the man who hadn’t been out there in years had worn thin.

“We won’t make the same mistake twice, paladin.” If Collins hadn’t hinted her rank affected her point she might have stayed quiet.

“If I had a cap for every time I heard a scribe say that.” Collins turned a shade that matched his robes.

“How dare you insult the scri—”

“Enough.” The elder made his decision. “I want to know what he knows, but I’m not going to risk killing him to get it.” The commander wanted another option, and like all good officers Sara had one.

“De-con.”