aaaaaaaagh_sky | Pennsylvania

Where they are right now in terms of pre-war boundaries, Ellen isn't sure. Tunneltown's long since fallen into the distance. There's been pre-war highway to follow in some places, and only the scent trail of a group of people big enough that they have to be slavers in others, and the occasional confirmation in the form of ashes and trash heaps and latrine pits that some large group passed this way recently. There've been things coming at them out of the landscape in places, like mole rats but smaller and more numerous and vicious, and the occasional ghastly-looking bird that circles remarkably low overhead before changing its mind and moving on. There've been ridiculously massive giant ants. Once, they found the body of a woman in slave rags. There wasn't anything they could do for her except move her off the road and lay her straight for the final rites, and then move on.

Ellen is beginning to hate Paladin Renny and her orders, although she'll never admit it out loud.

"Hey, Voodoo?" she calls instead at one point, eyes on the scent trail as Dogmeat sniffs the night air around them. "It looks like they veered off the road here and headed for that bunch of houses up in the distance. I don't know if they're still there, but the trail's pretty fresh..."

And pre-war houses, back in the Capital Wastes, tended to attract raider groups like a corpse attracts bloatflies.

Crossposts: http://aaaaaaaagh-sky.livejournal.com/53608.html

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

boston_bruiser

Voodoo's night vision goggles paint the landscape an eerie green as he swivels his neck to look where Ellen's pointing. It looks like your typical cookie-cutter mid-50s suburb at first glance.

A glint of glass on moonlight interrupts his second.

He slowly holds out a fist. "Freeze."

If it's a sniper, he has them dead to rights. If not, well, for all the detail these things are giving him, it might as well be.

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

Ellen freezes, silent, and grabs Dogmeat by the collar. The heeler doesn't smell anything wrong, not at this distance, so there's no growling to worry about.

The gods, if gods there are, are smiling on them today. It's not a sniper. Or if it is, it's a sniper who hasn't got his rifle out; it's someone with a nearly shaven scalp peering out the window through a pair of binoculars. Ordinary sentry, one who falls back from the window after a while and doesn't appear again until a few moments later at the other end of the house.

From:

boston_bruiser

Were he someone else, Voodoo might breathe a sigh of relief just now.

Instead, his hand inches back to the pistol grip of his M60.

"Sentry. Top left window of the two-story building, third house from the left."

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

"Dogmeat. Down."

Ellen's going to need both her hands to steady the Gauss rifle for a look through the scope, since she hasn't got binocs of her own.

"I see him. Can't be too many of them, if they've only got one on sentry duty."

From:

boston_bruiser

"Could be. Could be they're too lazy to go more than one man at a time." Or undisciplined. Voodoo's not putting either one past them.

Something dark jumps up at a ground floor window on the house to the right, then falls back down. Voodoo keeps stock-still. Any movement's likely to alert the sentry.

"More movement. Ground floor window, house to the right. Couldn't tell what."

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

Fwoomp.

"Not seeing a repeat," reports the featureless blur after a while. "Might've been a radroach. You find them in these old houses sometimes, and they jump."

From:

boston_bruiser

Voodoo grunts by way of reply, his eyes fixed on the sentry's house.

"Could be he's an OP. Could be a whole platoon of radiers downstairs. Won't know which until we get closer."

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

"Fair enough," says Ellen. "I'll take point."

Spotting her stealth field in daylight is tough enough. In low levels like this? Almost impossible. If anyone's going to get close enough to see without being seen, it's her.

"Dogmeat. Stay back with Voodoo."

From:

boston_bruiser

Voodoo raises the M60 to his shoulder and zeros in on the sentry's floor - if he's at either window, all it takes is a quarter-inch correction to put Voodoo's irons right on his head. It'll certainly be accurate enough to keep his head down if Ellen's cover is blown, maybe even kill him.

"Stay, Dogmeat. Stay."

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

The heeler whimpers- it goes against the grain not to go along with his human- but obeys. Which is just as well, since even if the sentry didn't spot him, the dog's tendency to growl at the smell of danger would be a problem.

Ellen's got ground to cover without giving herself away, which means moving at an agonizingly slow pace. Which... turns out to be something of a good thing. As she gets closer to the house, the faint blurred patch stops moving for a while. Eventually it comes back, equally slowly, and mutters, "They planted prox mines out front. Left 'em just barely visible, but high enough to disable without too much trouble come morning. They don't want anybody getting out of that house overnight."