Escape!, Reprise
Nov. 13th, 2010 11:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aaaaaaaagh_skyThe door slid open as Ellen hurtled towards it. On the other side a man in an officer uniform had his hand on his plasma pistol. It would have been nice to say that she remembered everything John-117 had taught her and knocked him unconscious with a single blow, but in all honesty it was more a case of not being able to check her momentum in time to avoid hitting him head-on.
John would probably have been proud of the fact that Ellen managed to tuck and roll out of the mess, though. And that when she ran from the scene it was in the man's uniform, with his pistol and all his ammunition. If he could escape after the blow she dealt him then more power to him.
"Hey! You!" shouted a soldier's voice from a side corridor as she wheeled desperately around an unfamiliar corner. "Get back to your- wait, you're the intruder! OPEN FIRE!"
So much for the disguise. Ellen dove for the floor, praying it would take her out of the soldier's line of sight. Laser fire tore through the air- none of it, she suddenly realized, directed at her. She lifted her head. At the far end of the corridor she could make out some smoking heaps of ash, and the flashing orange alarm lights illuminated the looming black forms of two sentrybots.
"Colonel Autumn's authority insufficient to countermand Presidential order for civilian evacuee's safety," the robot informed her. "Have a nice day."
She got up and ran.
How long she had left on the self-destruct countdown she didn't know. What kind of decent self-destruct mechanism didn't come with a countdown timer? A wall-mounted map with a You Are Here marker flashed past; Ellen spun on one heel to squint at it briefly. Apparently she was on the same floor as the armory. It spanned most of the floor and opened onto an area near the stairs to the lowest level on the other side. It looked as if the door ahead on her left would get her access. At least, if the keycard she'd found in the uniform's pocket was cleared to get in.
It was. So was someone else's.
"What the- you're not supposed to be in here!" said a wide-eyed Anna Holt- the scientist who'd been missing from their desperate flight from the Jefferson Memorial, so long ago.
Ellen squeaked. She couldn't help it. "Anna?" she said. "You're alive? How did you escape?"
"I didn't." Holt fidgeted a little. "Look, we don't have time for-"
But Ellen was only half listening, her brain racing on ahead of her: You didn't escape. Which would mean you're dead, usually, but this isn't Milliways. So you're not dead. If you didn't escape then that means you're roaming around free, and THAT means you must have broken in somehow, and-
And you're... wearing the same clothes as the scientists I saw on the way up to the President....
"You went with them on purpose?" Ellen said, her mouth suddenly dry.
"Well- yes- look, if you had any idea how difficult it was to maintain Project Purity against everything the Wasteland threw at it, you'd have invited the Enclave in too!" Holt said. "Someone had to protect the-"
"You WHAT?"
Holt took a step back, her face pale. "When I realized your father was getting close to making it work I knew we could never rely on the Brotherhood a second time," she said. "If anyone was going to do the Wasteland any kind of good with the purifier it had to be people who were committed and capable, and that meant the Enclave. I heard the radio broadcasts the same as anyone else, so I did what I had to in order to protect the purifier. I never imagined-"
They were in an armory. Ellen put out her right hand. There was a plasma rifle under it. "Ms. Holt," she said, "you should be running."
Holt did.
Ellen closed her eyes and tried not to scream. Blindly, she turned to look anywhere that wouldn't remind her that she'd just let her father's betrayer go. When she opened her eyes she was looking not at the weapons wall, but at the racks of power armor suits not claimed by evacuating soldiers; they were few and far between. If any of them fit her, it would be a miracle...
... or else, just possibly, a by-product of the fact that even the Enclave liked to keep hold of unusual technology they captured in the Wasteland. Because, really, how many suits of T-45d armor with computers bright enough to give tactical advice and dole out Med-X at need currently existed?
"Medic armor reporting for duty, ma'am!" it bellowed, and for the first time that day Ellen felt as if she had a chance in hell of surviving.
NOW there was a countdown. It started at one hundred and twenty seconds. Ellen silently blessed the robots guarding the passage to the emergency evacuation door for having blown her would-be attackers to ashes.
At one hundred and ten seconds, she tripped over a corpse that was not ashes. It had, by the look of it, been strangled. The corpse she found at one hundred and five seconds had its head turned at an angle that made Ellen wince just to look at it. Neither of the corpses had any visible weapons, so Ellen kept running.
At one hundred seconds, twenty yards or so from the sign reading Exit- Emergency Use Only, she passed three closely-clustered piles of green goo.
At ninety seconds left on the countdown, a tall dark form reared up out of the shadows and centered a plasma pistol on Ellen's head. She froze; so did the other. A moment later the other figure stepped forward, into the flashing orange alarm-light that was all that still illuminated the corridor. It was a battered, bruised, severely staggering but still upright Star Paladin Cross, dressed in the remains of a blue and orange prisoner jumpsuit. "Cross," Ellen said as the older woman lowered the pistol, "what-"
"No time," Cross said a bit thickly. Her jaw was swollen, her dark skin darker than before; she must've taken one hell of a hit. "Tell you later. Let's get out of here."
It was the first time in her life she had done so, but nevertheless Ellen pulled off a respectable salute in the second and a half before the massive steel door ground open.
John would probably have been proud of the fact that Ellen managed to tuck and roll out of the mess, though. And that when she ran from the scene it was in the man's uniform, with his pistol and all his ammunition. If he could escape after the blow she dealt him then more power to him.
"Hey! You!" shouted a soldier's voice from a side corridor as she wheeled desperately around an unfamiliar corner. "Get back to your- wait, you're the intruder! OPEN FIRE!"
So much for the disguise. Ellen dove for the floor, praying it would take her out of the soldier's line of sight. Laser fire tore through the air- none of it, she suddenly realized, directed at her. She lifted her head. At the far end of the corridor she could make out some smoking heaps of ash, and the flashing orange alarm lights illuminated the looming black forms of two sentrybots.
"Colonel Autumn's authority insufficient to countermand Presidential order for civilian evacuee's safety," the robot informed her. "Have a nice day."
She got up and ran.
How long she had left on the self-destruct countdown she didn't know. What kind of decent self-destruct mechanism didn't come with a countdown timer? A wall-mounted map with a You Are Here marker flashed past; Ellen spun on one heel to squint at it briefly. Apparently she was on the same floor as the armory. It spanned most of the floor and opened onto an area near the stairs to the lowest level on the other side. It looked as if the door ahead on her left would get her access. At least, if the keycard she'd found in the uniform's pocket was cleared to get in.
It was. So was someone else's.
"What the- you're not supposed to be in here!" said a wide-eyed Anna Holt- the scientist who'd been missing from their desperate flight from the Jefferson Memorial, so long ago.
Ellen squeaked. She couldn't help it. "Anna?" she said. "You're alive? How did you escape?"
"I didn't." Holt fidgeted a little. "Look, we don't have time for-"
But Ellen was only half listening, her brain racing on ahead of her: You didn't escape. Which would mean you're dead, usually, but this isn't Milliways. So you're not dead. If you didn't escape then that means you're roaming around free, and THAT means you must have broken in somehow, and-
And you're... wearing the same clothes as the scientists I saw on the way up to the President....
"You went with them on purpose?" Ellen said, her mouth suddenly dry.
"Well- yes- look, if you had any idea how difficult it was to maintain Project Purity against everything the Wasteland threw at it, you'd have invited the Enclave in too!" Holt said. "Someone had to protect the-"
"You WHAT?"
Holt took a step back, her face pale. "When I realized your father was getting close to making it work I knew we could never rely on the Brotherhood a second time," she said. "If anyone was going to do the Wasteland any kind of good with the purifier it had to be people who were committed and capable, and that meant the Enclave. I heard the radio broadcasts the same as anyone else, so I did what I had to in order to protect the purifier. I never imagined-"
They were in an armory. Ellen put out her right hand. There was a plasma rifle under it. "Ms. Holt," she said, "you should be running."
Holt did.
Ellen closed her eyes and tried not to scream. Blindly, she turned to look anywhere that wouldn't remind her that she'd just let her father's betrayer go. When she opened her eyes she was looking not at the weapons wall, but at the racks of power armor suits not claimed by evacuating soldiers; they were few and far between. If any of them fit her, it would be a miracle...
... or else, just possibly, a by-product of the fact that even the Enclave liked to keep hold of unusual technology they captured in the Wasteland. Because, really, how many suits of T-45d armor with computers bright enough to give tactical advice and dole out Med-X at need currently existed?
"Medic armor reporting for duty, ma'am!" it bellowed, and for the first time that day Ellen felt as if she had a chance in hell of surviving.
NOW there was a countdown. It started at one hundred and twenty seconds. Ellen silently blessed the robots guarding the passage to the emergency evacuation door for having blown her would-be attackers to ashes.
At one hundred and ten seconds, she tripped over a corpse that was not ashes. It had, by the look of it, been strangled. The corpse she found at one hundred and five seconds had its head turned at an angle that made Ellen wince just to look at it. Neither of the corpses had any visible weapons, so Ellen kept running.
At one hundred seconds, twenty yards or so from the sign reading Exit- Emergency Use Only, she passed three closely-clustered piles of green goo.
At ninety seconds left on the countdown, a tall dark form reared up out of the shadows and centered a plasma pistol on Ellen's head. She froze; so did the other. A moment later the other figure stepped forward, into the flashing orange alarm-light that was all that still illuminated the corridor. It was a battered, bruised, severely staggering but still upright Star Paladin Cross, dressed in the remains of a blue and orange prisoner jumpsuit. "Cross," Ellen said as the older woman lowered the pistol, "what-"
"No time," Cross said a bit thickly. Her jaw was swollen, her dark skin darker than before; she must've taken one hell of a hit. "Tell you later. Let's get out of here."
It was the first time in her life she had done so, but nevertheless Ellen pulled off a respectable salute in the second and a half before the massive steel door ground open.