Chapter 26 Rosie snapped her fingers. The next week dragged. Paul and Brandon left the next morning, returning three days later. Rosie busied herself crafting, pressing ammo, training, fielding questions and incorporating suggestions. Two days before the night of the operation Matt, Brandon, and Paul left. The power armour would take a longer route and Matt would take point in his R frame. They stayed in touch over the comm. The next day Rosie and Charlie ran the jet fuel drop, taking Janey as back up. She got a new appreciation of how heavy the drums were as she and Charlie carried them into place. Both hid and watched from cover as the raiders collected them as before, leaving the caps and heading south. Rosie spent the next day on her gear. Brandon had left her a sketch for a compensator so she started with that. The suppressor for the two tone sidearms worked well enough, if a little long, and the compensator wouldn’t make it quieter. What it did do is almost eliminate the recoil entirely. The small, five seven calibre rounds didn’t have a lot to begin with. Now with a cast steel block, blued, laser cut, and mounted over the narrow barrel, the gas expansion chamber and angled vents in the bottom made rapid firing easy. Using an idea she’d always liked, Rosie had crafted a triple barrelled grenade launcher. She'd found the same folding hand carts in the private Vault below. Large wheels replaced with three smaller ones that rotated to go up stairs. She’d always admired the simplicity. Built around a triangular steel rod, cut so the tubes sat flush, and pushed forward with the foregrip to load. The stock collapsed and the solid trigger tripped the firing pins in sequence. And with that tested, she tossed it into her gear bag and set off. “Not too late to call it off.” Charlie whispered as they crouched behind a car down the road from The Not So Grand. “But I’m all dressed up.” Rosie joked, gesturing at her scruffy clothes that had been deliberately muddied. She pulled up the blue bandana over her face and pulled the cap brim down. “I’m ready.” Charlie did the same and burst from cover, making noise and waving a crude pipe pistol wildly. Rosie followed, racking the basic pump action shotgun, catching the pair of raiders off guard. “Put ‘em up!” Charlie yelled. “Get down!” She played panicked convincingly. “Which is it bitch!” The raider snarled. “Kiss the blacktop!” Rosie kicked at the back of thier knees, just hard enough. “We just want the caps ok, stay down.” Charlie sounded afraid, Rosie felt glad the bandana covered her smile and tried to keep it from her voice. “Shit there’s a sackful.” Rosie took the caps from the raiders and jangled through them behind their backs. “You stupid bitches, you know who you’re robbing!” The raider started to reach for his gun, fear in his voice. Charlie fired a wide shot. “Raider scum.” “Look inside the sack, you’re fucking with the Red Hand!” Rosie acted scared. “He’s right, got a bill. No one fucks with the Red Hand.” “They probably heard that shot too! Better run, cause I’m gonna—” Rosie fired in the air, making sure the Red Hand heard that shot. She and Charlie bolted, firing roughly at the raiders, then disappearing in the opposite direction. The raiders leapt up, firing at shadows, as the four strong ghouls approached. “Fucking amateurs.” The ghoul rasped as he took the sack for himself, not even acknowledging the raiders. “This is Tornado, package is sent, signal strong. In pursuit.” They tracked the ghouls for an hour from the air. The signal from the sackful of caps showed them taking a different route, but headed north. The Velo touched down at the meeting spot, a mile from the Red Hand base. Brandon had told her that it had been a relay station, used to transmit and intercept radio traffic. Fairly common, well hidden, and of no real use since such little radio traffic remained. Matt heaved the heavy pack from the Velo, securing it on the back of his frame. Rosie checked her gear bag one last time, sheathed the retracted Assaultron blade on her back, and checked the sidearm on her hip. Brandon took both her hands before she pulled up the stealth suit hood, looking her in the eyes. “Good hunting.” Rosie nodded and slid the orange visor into place. At the foot of the cliff Rosie tied the rope into a harness across her chest, then unwound six feet of it and clipped onto the back of Matt’s frame. She leant back on her heels as Matt climbed the rope she’d positioned a week ago. Soon she’d been lifted from the ground and began to walk up the vertical rock face. The view from the top hadn’t changed. The Red Hand went about their night unaware of her presence. The guards on the bottom of the large relay dish were no more alert. The rooftop positions were manned. In the yard below they clustered in small groups of red masks sat round tables and burning barrels. Rosie passed the time spotting for Matt to dial in the antique sniper rifle and calibrating the goggles to detect what little heat the rotting bodies gave off. “This is Maelstrom, package inbound.” Brandon came over the comm with conformation of the returning ghouls. “Solid copy. Tornado moving in.” Let your plans be dark, Rosie thought to herself as she walked face first over the precipice. Matt lowered her as the weight of her gear bag pushed her down. With minutes Rosie set foot on the floor of the narrow gorge, hidden in shadow and silence. The former people didn’t notice her slip towards them with her suppressed carbine levelled. The first kill shot she could make took effort to ignore. Rosie approached the base of the relay tower, a square of metal and concrete joined by walkways to the main building. She hopped a railing onto the external walkway, her footsteps muffled by the stealth suit. The rooms were dark and messy, chairs that looked like they had been pulled from cars and long broken radio equipment. Rosie sensed Matt’s scope on her as she reached to top walkway. The back of the relay dish had been cut away to grant access with an extension welded to the walkway. She saw a rectangle of the night sky and heard rasping laughs from the machine gun nest. Rosie stashed her gear bag at the corner of the walkway, leaving her carbine ready, taking only her cutglass knife and engaging the stealth field. The knife fashioned from rock resonated at a consistent rate as the current of the stealth field enveloped it like an extension of her arm. Any sound she made once inside the dish would be amplified and echo. She crept slowly, terrified they would hear her heart pounding. The two supposed guards sat with their feet up on the bagged earth, a well worn chess set of mismatched pieces between them. From below the sound of the counterweighted gate opening spurred her into action. Rosie drove the cutglass shard through the red cloth at the temple, breaking the stealth field. Sheer disbelief held the other ghoul still long enough for Rosie to pull the knife free and drive it through a sunken black eye. The rotting body twitched until she twisted the shard and pulled it free. The bodies slumped in the chairs didn’t look out of place. Most of the focus had shifted to the sackful of caps, drawing a group of a dozen or so, just like last time. “This is Tornado. Package received in three, two, one.” Rosie accessed the signal coming from the sack, being sent by the radio detonator and pound of composite explosives they staged a failed robbery to plant. Rosie couldn’t resist using the trigger protocol she’d programmed. There she stood, starting down at her one time captors and torturers that were about to reap the profit of their inhumanity. With a snap of her fingers she reduced their number by almost half. Rotting flesh tore from the bone under the force of the shock wave alone. Every cap they’d earned by the enslavement of those thought of as lesser, became shrapnel hurtling through walking corpses. "Cyclone, Tornado. Send it." The subsonic rounds barely registered in the wake of the explosion and chaos below. Rosie covered the stunned rooftop guards, spotting for Matt as he methodically dropped them both. When near, appear far away. “Whirlwind, Tornado. I have control.” “Solid copy. Stood ready.” Rosie heard the bolt on the light machine gun snap forward as she took control of the Velocibird. Low and silent, five hundred meters away, the Velo climbed. Charlie transferred to the back seat, clipped the support strap in place, double checked her harness and opened the door with a kick. Wind howled into the cabin as Rosie began to make it bank remotely. Charlie let rip a burst of fire, coming in over the gate and cracking off the concrete, casings caught in the attached bag. The Velo went into an arc as confusion and panic landed with the bullets. By now the Red Hand had reacted, closing into a fist, and garrisoning the building. Rosie let rip a high burst from the heavy machine gun to maintain appearances a little longer. Matt had used the opportunity in the chaos to descend, bringing the heavy pack. Rosie had trained for this part of the plan. She grabbed her gear and took the cut down hand cart wheels, tying them around the heavy machine gun that lived up to its name. Rosie had to push into the dreamlike state just to drag it, but she did, and got it behind the dish. She glanced down seeing Matt positioned exactly right. She tossed down the other end of the rope and used the weight of the dropping gun to lift the heavy pack up. “Travelling in this manner is most inefficient.” Janey folded up and out of the heavy pack, for a moment Rosie thought she looked annoyed. “Thunderbolt.” Rosie gave Janey the verbal command. “Confirmed.” The mechanical head angled upwards as the cranial laser warmed up. “Estimated time to completion sixty three seconds.” Janey began to cut away at the rusted steel mountings for the ceramic lined dish while Rosie set the shaped charges. Below her Matt lumbered with the heavy machine gun as his handmade distractions went off. Beer bottles stuffed with black powder and live rounds exploded as the smooth burning, pre-war cigarette fuses melted the thin wax seals and ignited. Between that and more bursts from Charlie, the Red Hand opened up from the far corner of the building, convinced of a threat from the outside. Appear weak where you are strong. Rosie grabbed her gear bag and descended to the ground, stalking round the perimeter to find an angle. Matt had stopped behind the second of three raised bunkers, still invisible to the enemy. The Red hand stopped firing, good enough to realise they were wasting ammo. He gave her a nod and Rosie sprinted halfway up the angled concrete. Firing each tube of her grenade launcher and breaking three different windows. Rattling shouting followed for a moment that quickly became laughter. “You pathetic smoothskin rats!” Contempt and arrogance broke the laughter in a tone Rosie knew well. “You think tear gas is gonna hurt us! This shit is like a summer bree—” Rosie loosed a flaming arrow that flared through dark and ignited the tear gas inside. Inhuman screams soon became lost in the roaring flames and wind rushing in through windows. Rosie checked her link to Janey and found her right on schedule. “This is Tornado, thunderbolt in three,” Rusted metal began to give. “Two,” Burning bodies leapt from the windows. “One.” A screech rang out above as the weight of the dish tore it free, dropping the bottom instantly down and arcing the top over. The dish hit like a massive hammer, shuddering and cracking concrete, then Rosie snapped her fingers. The shaped charges attached to the dish blew as the wave of the impact crested, driving the force down before shattering the dish upwards. Rubble and broken dish landed like rain. In the aftermath Matt had kept his composure and got the gate open. Cutting the counter weights and shoving the trucks aside just enough for the dull green power armour outside to do the rest. Paul and Brandon drove the armour through the gate, grabbing the heavy machine gun with ease. One loaded the black tipped ammo they’d carried here while the other opened up, tearing shattered concrete from the burning and crushed building. Inside the concrete spread like a shotgun blast, decimating the ghouls that the high calibre rounds missed. Silence seemed to roll in on the wind. The Red hand disciplined enough not to fire at things they could barely dent. It also sent a message, they weren’t coming out. Paul and Brandon walked the power armour towards the main door, it’s signature whirring stomp known to the ghouls. Matt broke off the handles to the bunker entrances, sealing them tight and returned to his perch atop the ridge line. Rosie manoeuvred the Velo as Charlie switched to the fifty calibre sniper rifle, the barrel weighted down with an armour plate. Rosie scanned through Janey’s eye from above. The impact and explosion had punched clean through the middle of the third floor, opening the lobby and mezzanine floor to the night sky. She counted twenty faint traces of body heat, spread across two floors, all focused on the main doors. Things grew tense as the whirring stomp ceased advancing. By now Rosie had climbed back up to Janey and entered the building through the hole she'd made, unnoticed by her targets. Things were dark inside. Cracks running through the walls. The smoke from the burnt out fire and dust thick in the air. Rosie picked out nine slivers of heat on this floor, four to her right and five across to the open lobby. Two of the near identical figures were watching through the window, their bony hands raised to signal hold. The other two aimed at the door, waiting for the power armour with Molotov cocktails. She made a quick triangulation and adjustment. Hovering in the dark, hundreds of metres away, the Velo autopilot countered sway from the recoil as Charlie fired. Aiming at a dot projected on her goggles and nothing else. A second later, a bullet broke glass and the heat from the air resistance ignited the supply of crude bombs. Rosie let them burn. Something moved in the corner of her eye and triggered the dreamlike state, the rapid shift bringing a stretched out moment of panic. Across the lobby the other six had sprang into action, bursting through the door, four of them shouldering rocket propelled grenades. Rosie sent a single command and watched for as long as she dared. It looked like a trick of the light at first, like a reflection from water on the wall. Then the light grew tighter, focused, and shifted into vivid red. Rosie turned as the visor shut off to protect her eyes, snapping time back as she took cover on the ground. Janey’s personality subroutines and ability to carry out mundane tasks hid her true purpose. The laser beam her body had been built to use made lightning seem benign. The old world weapon of war scorched flesh and bone to nothing in seconds, erasing them like they’d never even been there in the first place. The laser burnt so hot the rpg’s melted before they could detonate. Rosie could feel her plan coming to fruition, her success near. She took the last of her gear from the bag and tossed four of the silver orbs to the floor below. She listened for any sound beyond the pinging but the Red Hand’s discipline held, until the modified smoke grenades went off. They opened up on nothing, stopping before reloading, but not before giving away their positions. Rosie extended the Assaultron blade and dropped into the fog. Columns spiralled in her wake as Rosie cut through bone and smoke alike. She killed five before the first body hit the floor, bursts of automatic fire following the thuds and cracking off the wall. A swift kick flung a dropped rifle to her left, drawing more fire. She heard two magazines clatter to the ground and got off a clean headshot with her sidearm. Four remained, and still they fought on, drawing in on her position behind a pillar as the smoke cleared. With one last breath Rosie span from cover, hurling the blade towards the nearest target and firing at the other. The blade struck with a bone cracking thud as it took the ghoul down, but the shots to the other’s chest didn’t get the job done. Rosie ran and fired blindly backwards, bullet impacts chasing her shadow. She rolled over a twice dead body, picking up the assault rifle and using the recoil to cut a wide, reckless burst of fire. It pulled her off balance and down to the floor. The sound of dragging and laboured breathing brought a smile to Rosie’s face. She got to her feet, padding silently as the last remaining member of the Red Hand crawled before her. After he’d gone ten feet she let him hear the scraping of her blade on the concrete floor. The wounded animal froze, then turned with a revolver drawn. Rosie blocked the bullet with the side of her blade. Again and again he fired, each time the bullet deflected, until Rosie took his arm off at the elbow. A scream that sounded like pulling metal over rock filled the night air as Rosie dragged the last living ghoul into the spotlights of power armour. The ghoul thrashed and tried to crawl away until Brandon, out of his armour, stepped on the wounded, rotting leg. “You were a soldier once, yes?” Brandon knew the answer, he lit two cigarettes and tossed one over. The ghoul relented and clumsily grabbed one last smoke. Rosie paced behind Brandon, waiting, her visor off and eyes seething. “You say that like you know what it means.” The ghoul rasped back. “I’ve been at war for thirty years.” Brandon tried find common ground but drew only scorn. “This might be combat, but it ain’t war.” Something crept into the full black eyes. A look of understanding of the immutable nature of war that no one left breathing knew. “I’ve led ten thousand men to sack cities you’ve never heard of. I’ve spilled blood on every continent for my country. And for my service they have given it back to us.” “So now you enslave people, I’m seem to recall reading about a war to stop that. I’m surprised you hadn’t heard about it.” Brandon spoke calmly, mirroring, crouching and trying to draw a reaction. “I’m surprised you can read.” Brandon laughed off the arrogant jibe, getting a wheezing, chuckling response in return. “I like a good book, history especially.” Brandon produced a bottle of whiskey. He opened it a took a swig. “Not exactly a twenty five Mckellan, but as last drinks go you could do worse.” He rolled the bottle over to the ghoul who seemed distrustful, yet couldn’t help taking the drink and snarling in return. “The fuck do you know about good whiskey.” The ghoul took the homemade whiskey and drank a third of the bottle in a single swig. “I found a crate of it in a bunker that belonged to man named Burton Blake.” Brandon took a pull on the cigarette, slowly. “That fucking asshole always did have good taste.” Brandon’s seemingly passive demeanour began to yield results. “You knew him?” Brandon spoke casually, as if engaged on conversation, not interrogation. “That prick is why we were out here. We had orders to secure and transport so called vip’s to one of them Vaults.” No one reacted, letting the ghoul talk with sneering contempt. “We saved dozens of fat, lazy, worthless civilians, even as the bombs fell, and they closed to door on us. We were angry, and in pain. Then we understood the reward we’d been given.” The ghoul extended his one remaing rotten arm. “We didn’t need clean water, or fresh food, we could walk the earth without suits or pills. And do so for the next thousand years. We are the next evolution.” Still the arrogance persisted, despite a missing forearm, a leg wound seemed to be bleeding slowly and causing little pain. “So what, you’re the master race now, is that it? Because you really should have read how that one ended too.” Brandon tried to keep the ghoul talking with lessons from history. “We are better.” The ghoul took another long drink, his delusion holding despite everyone he knew lying dead around him. “Do you know what a Neanderthal is?” Rosie, still pacing and glaring, knew the word. Primitive ancestors to the human race. Brandon stood, deflecting the question. “One last question. This Vault, where is it?” Rasping laughter followed. “You think you can get inside!” “If we can’t get in then there’s no reason not tell us.” Brandon had trapped the rotten mind with it’s own twisted logic. “South east of here, half a day from The Grand. Go fucking nuts.” Brandon turned to Rosie. She shook her head to confirm the Vault in question wasn’t what they’d been searching for. What he’d sacrificed his marriage and seeing his daughter for. Rosie didn’t understand how much it truly meant to Brandon till she saw the hope dashed by her response. Rosie didn't think she could hate the only Vault she knew more, till that moment. “Do you remember your name?” Brandon spoke to the ghoul with the contempt no longer hidden from his voice. “Higgins, Sean. Colonel. Born eighteen eleven, twenty thirty nine.” The century and a half old, wounded and rotten monster got to his knees, spiting out a memorised number that used to mean something. He took one last drink and Bradon kicked the bottle from his lipless and masked face. Glass smashed as Rosie drew closer. “For your crimes against humanity, for betraying those you swore an oath to serve...” Brandon turned from the sneering, mocking laughter. He took something from the pack at his feet and handed it Rosie. “I sentence you to death.” Rosie took a deep breath, listening to crumbling ruins, the wheezing that sounded like sawing wood. Each step she took closer felt like every step she’d taken while collared and bleeding. Terrified of a new world she’d fought to reach, enslaved again by those who thought themselves her betters. Black eyes and ragged breath began to panic as something choked what little life remained from the rotting throat. Rosie had moved so fast that the ghoul didn’t realise she’d put a collar on him, fastened tight, as they had taught her. The remaining rotten arm clawed at the explosive device and knew it instantly. “You worthless bitch! We built this world, we own—” Rosie snapped her fingers. Rosie knelt on the cold, hard ground, feeling a knot in her mind untie. Her plan had worked, everybody got through it unharmed, and the Red Hand lay broken before them. “They’d make you a captain for this.” Brandon helped her up. “This will have to do.” He gave her something better. Rosie took the black dagger that she’d bought weeks ago and hadn't seen since. It looked the same, except for hand stamped lettering punched into the handle. “Ex umbra mortis.” Rosie tried to think in the dead language. “Death from the shadow.” “You tracked, observed, and executed your target.” Brandon handed her water and drew his matching dagger. “When these knives were designed, they were issued to men a lot like us. Commando’s, trained to strike behind enemy lines and accomplish that thought impossible. They fought an enemy not unlike these monsters. Their operations saved thousands by shortening the war.” Brandon held her gaze. “What you’ve done here will save lives. I’m proud to be a part of it.” Rosie didn’t know what to say. She’d felt more alive in the last few hours than in the last few years. “Boss!” Paul burst through bullet ridden doors, carrying a large, wooden chest. He dropped it with a rattle. Brandon crouched, igniting his lighter to read the first line of the carved inscription. He snapped it shut after lighting his cigar and recited the words from memory. “‘There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.’” He kicked open the chest, knowing what he’d find. As Rosie stared at the chestful of caps she understood the inscription. Miles south from here sat an empty home, filled with food and warm beds, power, safety. And piles of caps that meant less to her than they did to the Red Hand. “How much do you think it is?” Paul asked, not even trying to hide his grin. Rosie made a rough guess based the size of the chest. “Fifty thousand. That’s a lot right?” Rosie tried to lighten the mood. “No.” Paul’s answer threw her. “Not when there’s three more just like them upstairs.” Rosie walked out of the gate like she owned the place, just as the first day in decades without the threat of the Red Hand dawned. It took until nightfall the next day to get all five home. Landing the Velo nearby the concrete building proved impossible due to the debris and shrapnel strewn around. Some of the bottle caps looked fine, other had dug into hard walls and soft bodies. Rosie spent the day after the battle securing a landing zone and loading balanced cargo into nets. Paul and Brandon bought down crate after crate of ammo, explosives, and everything else they pulled from the wrecked building. Rosie flew back with Charlie and the second shipment. Matt, Paul, and Brandon spent the day moving south with the rest. Rosie flew out to them after sundown, collecting another load and Janey. She didn’t truly relax till she saw the power armour from the top of the lighthouse.