The Trail

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The door opens, as it often does, on a patch of scrub desert under a cloud-studded sky. Peering eastward, you can make out the shape of a shattered, once-elevated highway in the light of the just-risen sun, and perhaps the jagged edges of the tallest parts of the Megaton city walls. The air is a little cooler than it's been on past visits, and here and there the brown and yellow scrub that characterizes Wasteland vegetation seems to be sharing space with hazes of green.

There's also kind of an overwhelming stink of cow, because Ellen left Megaton astride Shiphrah and Puah and the Brahmin is busily chewing its cud with one head nearby. Ellen pats the other head briefly with one stealth-suited hand as she says, "We're not far from the caravan route where the raiders ambushed our water men. This is the nearest door I could find."

Comments

[boston_bruiser]

Mohawk stays like that for a while, alternatively scuffing his boots or admiring his gun or picking his nose.

(Really, dude, you could've had the decency to do that when Voodoo wasn't holding his crosshairs at your center chest.)

But eventually, he saunters on down the catwalk, turning his back to Ellen.

"He's moving on," Voodoo radios. "You're good to go."

[aeons_crackshot]

"Nobody new in my sights," Annabelle adds.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Good. Because I found out why there's no scent trails off the tracks... the whole area's mined. Remember when we had to get into Minefield for Moira's book, Annabelle? Worse than that."

[aeons_crackshot]

"Oh, goody," Annabelle grumbles sarcastically. "That's gonna be a bitch to deal with."

Annabelle ponders this situation. "Unless you know someone who can fly, anyway."

[boston_bruiser]

"We can worry about that plenty once she's out of there," Voodoo says. "What else can you see, Ellen?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"The catwalks go on a good ways," Ellen reports. "I'm moving slowly. They've got a tripwire stretched across the gorge, and where there's one there might be more... okay, I can see up ahead where the gorge takes a bend and gets wider. Railroad cars to the left, fences and buildings to the right, and more catwalk guards."

[aeons_crackshot]

Yeah, it definitely sounds like they're in there well and good.

"How many guards and are they alone or in groups?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"I'm seeing singleton guards every couple of yards or so along the catwalks," murmurs Ellen, her voice dropping as she gets into more heavily guarded territory. "Tin shack overlooking the railroad cars and the first few buildings, the big ones built into the western wall of the gorge. Pretty sure I'm seeing slave pens up ahead on the right. You don't forget that smell...."

She trails off into silence, and then says, very quietly, "Oh God."

[boston_bruiser]

That is not a tone of voice you ever forget.

And it is not a tone of voice you ever wanna hear.

"Ellen?"

He starts moving up to the window - stupid, since it silhouettes you, but goddammit, he needs to check on her.

"Ellen, you there?"

He fiddles with his radio and mike, gently smacking them as he brings the rifle to his shoulder, peering through the scope along the tracks where she should be.

"C'mon, Ellen, talk to me."

[aeons_crackshot]

No, no it's not. Nothing GOOD ever happens when someone has that tone of voice. Annabelle can feel her adrenaline kick in and her gut twist with worry. (Voodoo is not the only one moving toward a window.)

"Ellen. Ellen!" Annabelle hisses into her mike. "Come on kiddo, don't leave us hanging...."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

They're not going to be able to see much. The gorge is curved, and Ellen's long since moved around the curved part and out of line of sight. Not that LOS would help either of them anyway...

"It's a Behemoth. They've got a live Behemoth. Holy Jesus, it's bigger than the one at the Capitol..."

And there's a sound over the radio link, a thundering roar of inchoate rage even the tiny microphone and earpieces can't really dampen.

[masterofgunfu]

That's never a good sound on any world.

"What's the tact?" Andrea pipes in finally. WIth Ellen off grid, she deferes to Voodoo in the chain of command. She tries to see anything through her scope as well, with no luck, so she pans to see if the noise has woken the ant farm. "And just what the hell is a Behemoth?"

[boston_bruiser]

It doesn't take long at all for Voodoo to reach a decision. When you hear the word Behemoth, you drop whatever the fuck you're doing and listen real goddamn close.

Voodoo glances at Andrea. "Bigass mutant. We're getting her the hell out of there," he says. "Okay, Ellen, you've done enough," he radios. "Now here's what I want you to do. I want you to follow the tracks back exactly the way you came. Once you get around the bend, we'll be able to cover you the rest of the way, okay?" He deploys his rifle's bipod, setting it on the windowsill. "You two," he says, nodding to Annabelle and Andrea, "pick a target and call it out. That thing smells her and we're gonna need to get the upper hand quick."

It doesn't take long for Voodoo to find a target of his own on the catwalks, a lanky skinheaded youth who looks like he took a wrong turn out of a 60s biker gang, what with his spiked armor and shiny new gun.

"I got one," he says, holding his crosshairs over the boy's center chest. "Skinheaded kid, on the catwalks, holding an assault rifle. He's mine."

[masterofgunfu]

"Cameo pants and mohawk at 6 o'clock," Andrea says confirming her target. She pans to see if she can get a good shot at the trip wire Ellen mentioned in case they need a big distraction (it'd be a long shot but might be worth the chance), before setting her sites on her called shot. Then she sits tight and waits for the command.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"It's penned up. Electrified fence. Don't know how long that'll last," Ellen murmurs. "I'm coming."

The thing roars again. There's a distant sound of crackling.

"I'm coming faster. I think the fence just makes it mad."

[boston_bruiser]

"Stay cool, Ellen," Voodoo says. "You're almost outta there, just stay cool."

Voodoo's finger is no longer on the magazine well. Instead, it is on the trigger, taking up the first pound of the three-pound slack as he holds the crosshairs on the kid.

[masterofgunfu]

Andrea's done the same, though she also breaths steadily and wiggles her toes (without shifting her stance) to keep from tensing up, an old trick a Master-At_arms had taught her.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"I'm trying." Pause. "Two more patrollers, eastern side of the gorge. Just above me. Haven't seen me yet."

The kid Voodoo has his crosshairs on glances over his shoulder; the foremost of the two new guards, a woman in remarkably little leather for someone carrying a gun quite so shiny and new-looking, gestures back in the direction from which they came.

(Someone alert to shifting things at the edges of their peripheral vision might well notice an oddly blurry patch of shadow in the gorge, not far from the tripwire Ellen mentioned.)

[aeons_crackshot]

Annabelle recognizes that shiny, shiny gun. She's got one herself, back at the Bar, because SHE bought it from Ellen after her escape from the Alien ship.

"What the FUCK?!. Ellen, how the hell would one of these bastards have gotten their hands on an alien blaster like the one you sold me!"

[masterofgunfu]

"What kind of range do those things have? Anything we need to worry about up here?"

Giant scorpions, behemoths, blasters? It's almost like back home except it'd be a fire ball instead of a blaster but who's counting?

[boston_bruiser]

"We can worry about all that once she's out," Voodoo repeats, his crosshairs never leaving the raider. "You're almost there, Ellen. Just keep low and go."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"They're disintegration weapons," says Ellen after a stunned silence. "We need to move. I'm coming-

What follows is possibly the most painfully slow five minutes of her life, as Ellen creeps oh-so-very-carefully out of the gorge and its shadows at what she sincerely hopes is a pace the watchers above won't notice. If they'd just been carrying ordinary-but-high-quality guns, she'd have been willing to move faster. The suit's designed to slow down or stop bullets, after all. But as she told Annabelle back when she was getting rid of the alien guns at Milliways, I call this model the Disintegrator because that's what it does.

You don't take chances being winged with something like that.

"I'm in the open now. Please, for the love of God, tell me they're looking the other way so I can move properly."

[aeons_crackshot]

Annabelle's uncanny luck may be extending to Ellen at the moment, because that instant is when the two guards' patrol takes them on a path that will quickly lead to them facing the other way.

"Wait 5 seconds, then go," Annabelle says. "Their path should have them facing away from you by then."

[masterofgunfu]

Andrea pans her scope along the catwalks to make sure no other guards show signs of noticing anything odd, which seems to be the case.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, four one thousand, five-

She bolts, and while no one's ever called Ellen a sprinter, she's at least doing a respectable pace right out of the starting blocks. And she doesn't stop until she's made it into the office building and has her back to a piece of still-standing wall and can foomp! herself visible again.

... she might be panting a little under there.