Arrival

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

It’s been a long, long way across country from where they started, but Ellen hasn’t complained. Paladin Renny was abundantly clear: find the people who stole Dave, and find Dave, and bring Dave back. There really wasn’t much leeway in that regardless of how you looked at it.

At least they found the ancient railway lines somewhere in the belly of Pennsylvania. No ghouls here, thank God. Just the giant roaches, and the ants as big as Ellen, and rats and other things best left to the imagination. More importantly, there were the handcarts. Ellen had seen them in a couple of old vids- wheeled things that ran on railroad tracks that had to be pumped by at least two humans. The work involved was immense, but it was a much, much faster trip than anything that could be done on foot. Somebody had begun the process of renovating and maintaining those tracks in the past two hundred years. Maybe one day Ellen would find out who.

Today is not that that day. Tomorrow is not looking good either. Today is the day when the cart comes to a halt just inside the mouth of a railroad tunnel that smells of industrial chemicals and burning. Someone’s scrawled WELCOME TO THE PITT – BRIDGE 1 MI. THAT WAY in rust-colored paint on one wall of the tunnel. Beyond lies what looks like a pre-War rail yard, under clouded, smog-coated skies.

Ellen rubs at her nose with the back of one hand. “I’m really not looking forward to doing this in reverse,” she mutters. “Maybe I can get Fawkes to help with a Milliways door…”

Comments

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo grunts as he takes in the scene. "Couldn't hurt. Might still be a supervisor's office or something around here still standing."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The place looks like the sort of trainyard one might expect to find in the less affluent areas of Detroit, full of corroded railway cars and the evidence of transient human habitation in times gone by. Here and there the occasional generator powers a pair of high intensity lamps, illuminating the surroundings for... some reason. Hard to say what. Not as if anybody seems to be in the vicinity, at least not at the moment.

Ellen doesn't like the look of this at all, and nods towards one of the rotting boxcars. "I think I can get up on that," she says. "I want a look from an angle where nothing's gonna jump me."

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo nods. "Viz is shit down here." He brings the M60 up and aims it down the railyard - no sense in abandoning SOP. "Let me know what you see."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Foomp.

Dogmeat begins to pad in widening circles, sniffing the foul-smelling wind as Ellen's blur scrambles up the side of the boxcar and vanishes. The dog pauses at one point, holding very still; he turns and looks over his shoulder at Voodoo before looking back towards the northeast.

[boston_bruiser]

There's a CLANKCLANKCLANK of something on grating behind Voodoo, and he whips around, scanning the trainyard for movement. There's none.

He isn't hearing things. He's not nearly sleep-deprived enough for that.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Dogmeat growls softly and begins to slink around towards the source of the noise. The heeler's hackles are raised and his head is held low; he doesn't recognize the sound or the smell, and he doesn't like it.

[boston_bruiser]

A quadrupedal figure suddenly leaps out from above, pinning Voodoo to the ground.

"FEED!" it shrieks, spittle flying in a frenzy.

Voodoo brings a boot up and kicks it in the gut, sending it stumbling off him - it's not feeding today, if he has a say in it.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Or if Dogmeat has a say in it either, given the streak of black and grey that flies past in a frenzy of snapping and snarling.

It's said that Army dog trainers consider their animals 'the bullets you can recall'. Given what happens to that thing, Dogmeat's more of a living hand grenade.

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo rolls to his feet and takes out his pistol, but Dogmeat's already got it covered - he's glad he's on his side.

"Asshole."

He's too tired to come up with anything more creative.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Baroo?" says Dogmeat, or something like it; it's a little hard to tell when he's being addressed if he's in the middle of a kill.

It doesn't matter much, though. A patch of faintly blurry air drops from the top of one of the railroad cars and resolves into a familiar black and gold shape. "Well, I've been- holy God, what is that?"

Ellen... kind of thought she knew all the horrible things her world could throw at people. Apparently not.

[boston_bruiser]

"Not you, that thing. Good job. Killing it."

He looks up at Ellen. "Fucked if I know. I heard clanging up above, next thing I know this thing jumps me." He looks at it. "Probably some fuckstick high on something."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen crouches down to peer at what's left, turning the head a little to one side, then the other. "It's not a ghoul, that's for sure," she says. "There's nothing here that looks like cutaneous radiation syndrome, but... ugh."

She waves Dogmeat back from the corpse and moves to straighten it out. As she does so she says, "There's a couple of office sheds farther along, and they've got occupants. Raider types, by the look of it- I counted a few sniper rifles, but they're all wearing metal armor or reinforced leather."

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo looks over the train cars. "We could travel along the boxcars to get to 'em. Cut the roofs open, drop some grenades on 'em to flush 'em out, then cut 'em down."

He looks at Ellen. "'less you want to bypass 'em."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen considers this for a moment before regretfully shaking her head. "Nice as it might be to locate a door early, I don't want to start fighting anybody we don't have to," she says. "We're going to need to find a way into the city and locate Dave, and that'll be easier if we don't spend time and resources picking fights out here we don't absolutely need to fight. Let's see if we can't find an alternative route first."

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo scans the railyard and stops near the east, where the railyard's fence is replaced by a high wall of stone. He moves toward it - there's a pair of gates topped with barbed wire beyond the wall, locked and bolted on the railyard side.

"I got our alternate. Gates to the east. Locked from this side."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"We'll have to work with that, then," Ellen murmurs. "I-"

There's a scuffling sound from nearby, the sound of bootheels on loose gravel. Ellen freezes, and signals to Dogmeat to do the same.

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo scans the trainyard, looking to pinpoint the source. It's no use. In a yard this big, a sound that fleeting could've come from anywhere.

And this is not the kind of place where you ask who's there.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

There's a shadow up ahead that just detached itself from the shadows between two boxcars- a pair of people, hurriedly glancing this way and that. Two men, by the look of it, scruffy and leather-clad. They might almost be headed for the gate themselves, but as Voodoo and Ellen and Dogmeat take cover, they stop in their tracks.

They're not alone. A group of three men in body armor, augmented along the shoulders with nasty-looking spikes, just came around the far end of the boxcars on what looks like some kind of patrol. The leader of the spike wearers squints at the two other men; one, slightly taller and paler, gives a nervous little fake-sounding laugh. "Hey, hey," he says, his voice raspy around the edges. "What're you guys doing here?"

"I might ask you the same thing," growls the leader of the spike-wearers. "You got a lot of guts showing your face around here, Wernher..."

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo keeps behind cover - from the sound of it, it's a turf conflict, one that they'd be better off keeping out of. At least until after the dust settles.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Yeah?" says Wernher, as the man next to him shifts his weight nervously. "Well, I guess that's the difference between us, isn't it? I've got a lot of guts. You don't...."

Anyone who has ever seen an action movie knows what happens next. The hail of gunfire on both sides is as inevitable as two street dogs tearing into each other over a third, and about as messy. It's the kind of thing even the well-armed and armored are well advised to stay away from.

It is also not the only source of trouble in the trainyard. Dogmeat suddenly growls and bristles- there's a figure in bulky, heavy-looking gear thudding its way around the railroad cars from the other end, straight towards Ellen and Voodoo's position.

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo doesn't even bother with the a compliance call. Not here. Not now.

Which is why the only warning the raider gets is a seven-round burst of 7.62 straight to his midsection.

"Ellen! Hostile at your nine!"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Don't get us wrong, Ellen loves her Gauss rifle dearly and the thing does do an amazing amount of damage at amazing distances- but for close range work there are better weapons by far. Which is why virtually as soon as Voodoo starts shouting, the area around them is lit up with red.

Even if that raider lives, he's going to be blind for the rest of his life. Lasers directly to the face are like that.

[boston_bruiser]

One of the pillars of special warfare doctrine is hard, fast strikes - if you start a firefight and it lasts over a couple minutes, you open yourself up to counterattacks.

Which is why Voodoo's prepping a grenade - he's seen more uglies coming up along the boxcars, in the open spaces between lanes. Now's the time, while they're in the funnel.

"Frag out!"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"What?" says someone, and "Oh fuck!" says someone else. And then BOOM says the grenade, and that is more or less the end of that, at least once it stops raining chunks of gravel and worse. Lord knows there's no one else left who seems inclined to fight.

Okay, there's Wernher, crouched over one of the corpses and looking generally as if someone kicked him in the gut, but...

[boston_bruiser]

Okay, this one doesn't look like a raider. Still, no sense in taking chances.

Voodoo walks toward the man, his M60 up. "Hands where I can fuckin' see 'em. Now."