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Takoma Industrial
Mar. 18th, 2012 07:52 pm"This feels a little stupid, but Knight-Captain Colvin told me he wants me to start keeping a record of my thoughts after each engagement. I guess he wants me to be able to look back and see how I was thinking so that someday I can help newer Initiates, or something. Maybe so other Brotherhood members will be able to look at these things and see I'm not all that different, even if I was born an outsider. I don't know. He said it'd make sense eventually."
"Anyway, we had a combat engagement today. A big one. It started when I got a radio call- I don't know if anyone ever hearing this holotape knows, but we didn't always have good radio coverage in the Capital Wasteland. Ever since Raven Rock was destroyed, we've been deploying short-wave radio rigs everywhere one or more of us is stationed. I've got one in my house in Megaton, with antennas on top of the building just in case. I got my radio call last night telling me to report to the Citadel at dawn. There wasn't a water run for three more days and the Pride was being rolled out to Takoma Park. Turns out a scout patrol through the Takoma ruins ran into a really nasty nest of greenskins, and only one of the scouts made it out alive. He said they'd been fortified in the old Takoma Industrial Complex and that they had a Behemoth with them."
"Paladin Vargas is in charge of the Pride right now. Sentinel Lyons is still in rehabilitation for her rad sickness. She hates it, but she had it even worse than I did, thanks to... thanks to everything. Everybody knows what Sawbones said about my internal anatomy... anyway. Sentinel Lyons isn't in command at the moment, but Paladin Vargas still takes his lead from her. And both of them remembered that Behemoth that killed Ini- that killed Paladin Reddin, I guess, I mean, that was her test and she passed- well, anyway, they remembered I was there and they remembered what the Gauss rifle did to that thing, so Vargas ordered me to come with the Pride proper. Without Sentinel Lyons they're a man short, and I'm not as experienced as they are but my gun makes up for an awful lot of that."
"So I- so I made it to the Citadel before dawn, and we rolled out to Takoma. It's really complicated to get to- you have to go through the old Metro tunnels, the ruins are that tough to navigate aboveground. So you have to get to Vernon Square first, which is pretty nasty territory itself but at least I've been there before, and then you have to navigate to Takoma. The metro tunnels put you out at the bottom of a long sloping street and there's no real cover anywhere, so anybody up the street can see you. Which pretty much means the mutants, because they might not be bright but they have enough sense to post sentries."
"It was kind of murderous. I mean, not literally. Nobody died, thank God. But the mutants were all on high alert ever since Knight Hopper's patrol, so even though Knight-Captain Gallows was using a Stealth Boy when he took point, they opened fire pretty much as soon as he stepped onto the surface. And what made it even better was, they'd found a bunch of old cars with intact power plants and arranged them up and down the street so that even the least little stray bullet or laser beam could set off an explosion. So we had to be insanely careful and they just had to rain down hell on all of us. Paladin Glade was mad. He'd brought his Gatling laser, not his missile launcher, so he couldn't really get a clear shot at any of the greenskins up the hill, just the first rank or two. It was pretty much me and Knight-Captain Colvin and Paladin Dusk at that point."
"I don't know why Paladin Dusk dislikes Knight-Captain Colvin so much, by the way. She says he gives her a hard time because she's a woman, but I haven't really seen him doing that... maybe I'm just not with the rest of the Pride often enough."
"Anyway, we had to do what we could to take out the muties on the higher ground. I almost shot one of the cars to take them out, but Paladin Dusk stopped me because she said they were close enough to each other to cause a chain reaction. We managed to take down the worst of them and that's when Vargas called for a charge. Two of the cars did wind up exploding, but that was because one of the mutants pitched a grenade our way and overshot and it rolled down the hill. Vargas said to keep going and we'd get stimpaks and decon treatment when we made it back to the Citadel."
"Most of the greenskins were just piles of ashes by the time we finally took that stupid hill. Which was fine with me, mostly, but kind of a waste, since some of them had been carrying laser rifles and we really could've used their MF cells. We salvaged what we could- I mean, I salvaged, that's the job of the most junior member and I'm probably going to be that for a long time- and we kept on going. The road took a hook to the left at the top of the hill, so Vargas sent Gallows out again with the Stealth Boy."
"Gallows is kind of scary when he's got a chance to really hide properly. I saw a lot of mutants just plain die up there. I think we only had to shoot two. Gallows just crept from cover to cover and ended all the rest one at a time, I don't know how. Paladin Dusk says she doesn't trust him. I guess if you see somebody just invisibly kill enough people or mutants or whatever you'd be a little wigged out too. But he made things a lot easier for us, and he's always been polite to me even if he doesn't talk much, so..."
"Anyway, Knight Hopper's patrol had marked the way to the industrial plant. Which was good, because it was through a couple of buildings and down an unstable slope, and there were a bunch of other mutants patrolling the area. I don't know what they were looking for in there but I hope we made sure they never find it. They were- they were the nasty ones. Not like the usual mutants that just threaten to eat you and do horrible things to your corpse. The- the monstrous ones. Like you- like I saw outside Vault 87. The ones that it was just about- the ones where you could hardly see they used to be people, any more, the ones that just won't die... I mean, they did die. We did kill them. But they were horrible. One of them almost took off Paladin Kodiak's head. I don't know how long he's going to be in the infirmary even if we did get all those stimpaks in him-"
"I'm sorry. I- I shouldn't be thinking like that. But it was bad."
"We.... wiped out all of them in the end. I think I took down two. At least, I know I hit two of them and they went down hard. Considering how much gunfire and laser fire was going on I don't know who got the kills on those two. Gallows was keeping a count. I might ask him later, after I get patched up- I took some hits myself. Not any- not anything bad, not like Kodiak, but- there's blood in here, in my suit, I mean, I can feel it squishing around. I'll be really glad when Glade unlocks the suit's AI code to start dosing me with stimpaks instead of just Med-X. Just because I'm not feeling it doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. Isn't going to hurt. Whatever."
"But we got them all down. And we got a lot of weaponry off them. Better stuff than the muties usually have. We found out why when Vargas sent Colvin up to see if he could find Behemoth sign. Turns out there'd been mercs here, some time ago. Talons. He found pieces of their armor, all old and- and torn up, and what used to be artillery controls or something. I don't know how they got it there, but it hadn't been used in a long time, and the muties had torn pretty much all of it to bits anyway. And they took the guns and explosives and things off the dead mercs, so that- that was how."
"If we could've found any bones I would've laid them straight, but this was a mutant encampment. There weren't any bones. Just scraps."
"... so that was... yeah. We were trying to figure out how many Talons had died there when the Behemoth came out. He'd been- he'd been holed up in one of the buildings. We checked, later, and found a hole around the far side. Looked like he'd bashed his way in or something. He just went berserk, but, you know, those things always do... I remember being scared at the time. I mean, that thing roared like- that thing roared louder than anything, anything I've ever heard, except for Liberty Prime. Or maybe that Enclave orbital strike. But other than that it was the loudest thing I've ever heard,ever. And, you know, that's kind of horrifying. But... it didn't have a gun, you know? It had to pick things up and throw them if it wanted to hit us. It was too big to work a grenade, so it couldn't use those. And I think it had run out of cars because it never threw any at us and I know it would've thrown them if it could. So it could only hurt us if it could get close enough to hit us. And with Glade on the ground blasting away, and Vargas and Gallows hucking every grenade they could at it, that left me and Colvin and Dusk to pick it off. They told me to shoot at the knees while they went for the head, and I did, and-"
"It was just like I remembered it, from the- from in the city. You know how they tell you to shoot for the center of mass? The body, or whatever? It's not really very different when you shoot for a Behemoth's knees. Those legs are the size of a man's body, practically, so shooting for the knees is like just shooting for the heart. Only you're not aiming for killing it, you're aiming to knock its support out from under it, and then it can't come at you any more while you're busy killing it properly. That's- that's what I did. I got a bead on its left knee and fired, and it bellowed and just about fell over, and then it tried to charge me and it was just reflex, I just aimed for the knee and fired without even thinking about it, and it went toppling over like the end of the world or something. I don't think it had any knee left."
"I'm not sure who killed it. I think it was Dusk. Or maybe Glade, I didn't see which. All I know is, it went down and the ground shook and it was all over. We.... we searched the place but there wasn't really anything left to grab, so... that was it, except for me and Colvin."
"The greenskins aren't human any more, but they used to be. I don't think Forced Evolutionary Virus can destroy a person's soul, just their mind. Knight-Captain Colvin feels the same way. A lot of the other Brothers think he's weird because of it, but he says when he heard about me praying over dead mutants and ferals he knew we were going to get along just fine. That Behemoth.... that used to be a person. Maybe a hundred years ago or something, they're pretty big and pretty old, but it used to be a person and so did all the other mutants we killed. Colvin stopped to thank God for the opportunity to set those poor people free, let them out of their mortal imprisonment so their bodies and insanity couldn't drive them to be monsters any more. I prayed for forgiveness, for them and for us, because even when you kill something in self defense it might be okay but you're still killing it. And because-"
"I don't know. I know I'm part of the Pride, even if it's only a junior half-member. I know I'm Brotherhood and everything. But I spend a lot of time in the Wasteland with just Dogmeat. I just have the feeling that one day I'm going to die out there somewhere and it's just going to be me, and nobody is going to know where I fell or anything. I don't think I'm ever going to get a long walk in the dark to Arlington."
"So when I pray over the dead mutants, even though I don't know who they were, even though I killed them myself, I'm doing it because I hope that someday, someone will think enough of strangers to do the same for me."
"Um. I know that's morbid, but... that's how it is. So... yeah, that's it. I need to go see Sawbones now. I haven't had any of my wounds looked at and I used up my last stimpak on Kodiak."
"Anyway, we had a combat engagement today. A big one. It started when I got a radio call- I don't know if anyone ever hearing this holotape knows, but we didn't always have good radio coverage in the Capital Wasteland. Ever since Raven Rock was destroyed, we've been deploying short-wave radio rigs everywhere one or more of us is stationed. I've got one in my house in Megaton, with antennas on top of the building just in case. I got my radio call last night telling me to report to the Citadel at dawn. There wasn't a water run for three more days and the Pride was being rolled out to Takoma Park. Turns out a scout patrol through the Takoma ruins ran into a really nasty nest of greenskins, and only one of the scouts made it out alive. He said they'd been fortified in the old Takoma Industrial Complex and that they had a Behemoth with them."
"Paladin Vargas is in charge of the Pride right now. Sentinel Lyons is still in rehabilitation for her rad sickness. She hates it, but she had it even worse than I did, thanks to... thanks to everything. Everybody knows what Sawbones said about my internal anatomy... anyway. Sentinel Lyons isn't in command at the moment, but Paladin Vargas still takes his lead from her. And both of them remembered that Behemoth that killed Ini- that killed Paladin Reddin, I guess, I mean, that was her test and she passed- well, anyway, they remembered I was there and they remembered what the Gauss rifle did to that thing, so Vargas ordered me to come with the Pride proper. Without Sentinel Lyons they're a man short, and I'm not as experienced as they are but my gun makes up for an awful lot of that."
"So I- so I made it to the Citadel before dawn, and we rolled out to Takoma. It's really complicated to get to- you have to go through the old Metro tunnels, the ruins are that tough to navigate aboveground. So you have to get to Vernon Square first, which is pretty nasty territory itself but at least I've been there before, and then you have to navigate to Takoma. The metro tunnels put you out at the bottom of a long sloping street and there's no real cover anywhere, so anybody up the street can see you. Which pretty much means the mutants, because they might not be bright but they have enough sense to post sentries."
"It was kind of murderous. I mean, not literally. Nobody died, thank God. But the mutants were all on high alert ever since Knight Hopper's patrol, so even though Knight-Captain Gallows was using a Stealth Boy when he took point, they opened fire pretty much as soon as he stepped onto the surface. And what made it even better was, they'd found a bunch of old cars with intact power plants and arranged them up and down the street so that even the least little stray bullet or laser beam could set off an explosion. So we had to be insanely careful and they just had to rain down hell on all of us. Paladin Glade was mad. He'd brought his Gatling laser, not his missile launcher, so he couldn't really get a clear shot at any of the greenskins up the hill, just the first rank or two. It was pretty much me and Knight-Captain Colvin and Paladin Dusk at that point."
"I don't know why Paladin Dusk dislikes Knight-Captain Colvin so much, by the way. She says he gives her a hard time because she's a woman, but I haven't really seen him doing that... maybe I'm just not with the rest of the Pride often enough."
"Anyway, we had to do what we could to take out the muties on the higher ground. I almost shot one of the cars to take them out, but Paladin Dusk stopped me because she said they were close enough to each other to cause a chain reaction. We managed to take down the worst of them and that's when Vargas called for a charge. Two of the cars did wind up exploding, but that was because one of the mutants pitched a grenade our way and overshot and it rolled down the hill. Vargas said to keep going and we'd get stimpaks and decon treatment when we made it back to the Citadel."
"Most of the greenskins were just piles of ashes by the time we finally took that stupid hill. Which was fine with me, mostly, but kind of a waste, since some of them had been carrying laser rifles and we really could've used their MF cells. We salvaged what we could- I mean, I salvaged, that's the job of the most junior member and I'm probably going to be that for a long time- and we kept on going. The road took a hook to the left at the top of the hill, so Vargas sent Gallows out again with the Stealth Boy."
"Gallows is kind of scary when he's got a chance to really hide properly. I saw a lot of mutants just plain die up there. I think we only had to shoot two. Gallows just crept from cover to cover and ended all the rest one at a time, I don't know how. Paladin Dusk says she doesn't trust him. I guess if you see somebody just invisibly kill enough people or mutants or whatever you'd be a little wigged out too. But he made things a lot easier for us, and he's always been polite to me even if he doesn't talk much, so..."
"Anyway, Knight Hopper's patrol had marked the way to the industrial plant. Which was good, because it was through a couple of buildings and down an unstable slope, and there were a bunch of other mutants patrolling the area. I don't know what they were looking for in there but I hope we made sure they never find it. They were- they were the nasty ones. Not like the usual mutants that just threaten to eat you and do horrible things to your corpse. The- the monstrous ones. Like you- like I saw outside Vault 87. The ones that it was just about- the ones where you could hardly see they used to be people, any more, the ones that just won't die... I mean, they did die. We did kill them. But they were horrible. One of them almost took off Paladin Kodiak's head. I don't know how long he's going to be in the infirmary even if we did get all those stimpaks in him-"
"I'm sorry. I- I shouldn't be thinking like that. But it was bad."
"We.... wiped out all of them in the end. I think I took down two. At least, I know I hit two of them and they went down hard. Considering how much gunfire and laser fire was going on I don't know who got the kills on those two. Gallows was keeping a count. I might ask him later, after I get patched up- I took some hits myself. Not any- not anything bad, not like Kodiak, but- there's blood in here, in my suit, I mean, I can feel it squishing around. I'll be really glad when Glade unlocks the suit's AI code to start dosing me with stimpaks instead of just Med-X. Just because I'm not feeling it doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. Isn't going to hurt. Whatever."
"But we got them all down. And we got a lot of weaponry off them. Better stuff than the muties usually have. We found out why when Vargas sent Colvin up to see if he could find Behemoth sign. Turns out there'd been mercs here, some time ago. Talons. He found pieces of their armor, all old and- and torn up, and what used to be artillery controls or something. I don't know how they got it there, but it hadn't been used in a long time, and the muties had torn pretty much all of it to bits anyway. And they took the guns and explosives and things off the dead mercs, so that- that was how."
"If we could've found any bones I would've laid them straight, but this was a mutant encampment. There weren't any bones. Just scraps."
"... so that was... yeah. We were trying to figure out how many Talons had died there when the Behemoth came out. He'd been- he'd been holed up in one of the buildings. We checked, later, and found a hole around the far side. Looked like he'd bashed his way in or something. He just went berserk, but, you know, those things always do... I remember being scared at the time. I mean, that thing roared like- that thing roared louder than anything, anything I've ever heard, except for Liberty Prime. Or maybe that Enclave orbital strike. But other than that it was the loudest thing I've ever heard,ever. And, you know, that's kind of horrifying. But... it didn't have a gun, you know? It had to pick things up and throw them if it wanted to hit us. It was too big to work a grenade, so it couldn't use those. And I think it had run out of cars because it never threw any at us and I know it would've thrown them if it could. So it could only hurt us if it could get close enough to hit us. And with Glade on the ground blasting away, and Vargas and Gallows hucking every grenade they could at it, that left me and Colvin and Dusk to pick it off. They told me to shoot at the knees while they went for the head, and I did, and-"
"It was just like I remembered it, from the- from in the city. You know how they tell you to shoot for the center of mass? The body, or whatever? It's not really very different when you shoot for a Behemoth's knees. Those legs are the size of a man's body, practically, so shooting for the knees is like just shooting for the heart. Only you're not aiming for killing it, you're aiming to knock its support out from under it, and then it can't come at you any more while you're busy killing it properly. That's- that's what I did. I got a bead on its left knee and fired, and it bellowed and just about fell over, and then it tried to charge me and it was just reflex, I just aimed for the knee and fired without even thinking about it, and it went toppling over like the end of the world or something. I don't think it had any knee left."
"I'm not sure who killed it. I think it was Dusk. Or maybe Glade, I didn't see which. All I know is, it went down and the ground shook and it was all over. We.... we searched the place but there wasn't really anything left to grab, so... that was it, except for me and Colvin."
"The greenskins aren't human any more, but they used to be. I don't think Forced Evolutionary Virus can destroy a person's soul, just their mind. Knight-Captain Colvin feels the same way. A lot of the other Brothers think he's weird because of it, but he says when he heard about me praying over dead mutants and ferals he knew we were going to get along just fine. That Behemoth.... that used to be a person. Maybe a hundred years ago or something, they're pretty big and pretty old, but it used to be a person and so did all the other mutants we killed. Colvin stopped to thank God for the opportunity to set those poor people free, let them out of their mortal imprisonment so their bodies and insanity couldn't drive them to be monsters any more. I prayed for forgiveness, for them and for us, because even when you kill something in self defense it might be okay but you're still killing it. And because-"
"I don't know. I know I'm part of the Pride, even if it's only a junior half-member. I know I'm Brotherhood and everything. But I spend a lot of time in the Wasteland with just Dogmeat. I just have the feeling that one day I'm going to die out there somewhere and it's just going to be me, and nobody is going to know where I fell or anything. I don't think I'm ever going to get a long walk in the dark to Arlington."
"So when I pray over the dead mutants, even though I don't know who they were, even though I killed them myself, I'm doing it because I hope that someday, someone will think enough of strangers to do the same for me."
"Um. I know that's morbid, but... that's how it is. So... yeah, that's it. I need to go see Sawbones now. I haven't had any of my wounds looked at and I used up my last stimpak on Kodiak."