The man calling himself ‘Hornless’ shook his head in an effort to ward off the impending spiral of feelings that usually followed a flashback like that. He didn’t want to become too distracted from his current task; namely arming himself for a dangerous trek through alien territory with two wounded natives. Honestly, if anyone had told him a year ago that he would be helping mythological creatures (things usually found only in old holotapes and bedtime stories), escape a deadly forest in the middle of winter; he would have had them sent to the Psychology department for Vault Madness.
‘Hornless’ had been born Kai Donovan, only son of Zara and Isaac Donovan inside Vault Δ roughly twenty-two years ago. His father had been a Lead Engineer, one of the few privileged enough to wear a Pip-Boy Wrist Computer, something reserved for only the Supervisors and Leaders of Vault Δ. Kai had always been proud of his father’s importance and dependability during times of crisis; it was this pride that led him to pursue a career as an engineer himself when he came of age.
Naturally it was a devastating blow to his family when his father was killed in a power plant mishap when Kai was only eleven. The Overseer had taken good care of Isaac’s widow and son due to his selfless act of preventing a chain reaction that would have resulted in unimaginable damage to the rest of the vault without his sacrifice, but while Kai could be proud of his father’s courage he also always wondered, “Why not someone else’s dad?”.
His mother never fully recovered from her husband’s death, despite the brave front she tried to maintain. Kai, now a young man, was finally convinced that there was no real ‘God’ when she was later diagnosed with terminal cancer and that he would soon be all alone. The ideas that had been drilled into him about rebuilding the ‘American Ideal’ that once ruled the free world with the help of ‘God and Baseball’ then only sounded hollow to him as he struggled to save his mother’s life.
Apparently, the joke was on them; here he was, stranded on an alien world, most likely the last and only man on...whatever this planet was called.
It was obvious from his initial inventory of Section 7 that it had been outfitted for a small platoon of thirty to forty men and women to aggressively assert dominance over a section of the newly discovered territory and begin rebuilding humanity while using advanced technology to protect the settlement and establish possible negotiations with any neighbors for information and trade.
Manifest Destiny the history logs called it; only this time, on an interplanetary scale. Maybe even interdimensional now that he considered his new guests. It was too tragic to laugh about and too logical to dismiss as crazy. Vault Tech and the people in charge had really planned to ‘save’ Humanity by seeding new planets with people and telling them to be ‘be fruitful and multiply’. He wasn’t sure what went wrong, but he was almost positive that Project Delta was supposed to have triggered a long time ago, maybe even soon after the Vault closed.
So much for saving Humanity; a simple mistake, malfunction, or miscalculation and all the future got was one depressed engineer.
They were bitter, but this did produce a few chuckles after all.
Lifting the hidden panel, Kai entered the entry code on the newly revealed keypad and turned the handgrip with a muffled ‘thunk’. The hiss of pressurized air as the latch lifted was followed by the corridor lights inside the now buried bunker, to switch on. The smell of sterilized air seemed both fresh and stale compared to the winter-brisk atmosphere of the forest he had been living in. He had lived in a Vault for most of his life, but truth be told he preferred living under the sun and stars; even if the world out here was far more dangerous.
It didn’t take long for Kai to figure out that he was no longer the top of the food chain when it came to this new world. He had managed to survive due to some lucky breaks and quick reflexes in the beginning, but soon enough he was carrying a Gaston Glock 86 Plasma Defender with some custom modifications he added after studying the manual front to back.
Before leaving the Vault, Kai had never killed anything besides the occasional giant roach with a large wrench or mop handle. Here though, he had used the energy weapon with rather disturbing consequences; namely the few creatures that proved too feisty to scare off without hurting were summarily reduced to piles of green, glowing goo when struck with the hissing bolts of bright energy.
After his initial shock wore off Kai had a newfound respect for his chosen sidearm, and then buried the creepy remains in a shallow grave. He just hoped that the stuff wasn’t too toxic to the environment, or that the friends and family of his victims would come looking for them.
Despite the dependability of his Defender, Kai was sure it wouldn’t do much against some of the bigger things never seen but easily heard out there in the forest, their footsteps felt from some distance away as they charged though the woods or simply strolled without a care from one place to another and always leaving Kai breathless with anxiety. At first he thought of dinosaurs or prehistoric goliaths perhaps but with the advent of pegasi other, more terrifying options also became possible.
Kai was going to bring some real firepower on this trip and hope the ponies didn’t ask too many awkward questions. He hated lying to the sweet and dorky Emerald Breeze, but he was pretty sure he was an honest to goodness alien species and the ramifications were just too risky to contemplate discovery. Sure, they might not dissect him, but they also just might. He figured that a story about lost magical artifacts might work in the short-term, just long enough to see them off home and then skulk home without much fanfare.
It took Kai a moment but he realized he was just standing in the armory, spaced out and not having realized he had already arrived. Sighing, he began removing the bulky clothing that had kept him warm outside, including his goggles and mask. The feel of air hitting his skin was heavenly after pretending to be an ugly minotaur all day. With a quick sniff and a grimace, he decided a shower would also be an indulgence he would have to manage.
The water tanks were still plenty full and he found that snow was easy to feed into the reverse-osmosis filter intake, but without a main waterline or nearby river, he was forced to ration it carefully since nothing was ever certain.
After a luxurious ten minute shower, Kai found a black colored suit of futuristic-looking combat armor emblazoned with the Δ symbol on the shoulders in one of the supply lockers. Luckily, a full-face helmet complete with infrared night vision and breathing apparatus was included, so he could continue to cover his face.
While waiting to finish drying off though, Kai went over to one of the many shelves in the armory and reverently removed a smallish black trunk from its many contents and brought it over to the table in the center of the room. Opening the lid, he gazed upon a custom designed Pip-Boy, reinforced with polymers, weather sealing, and colored a foreboding black; the Δ symbol in stark white located in the top right corner of the faceplate. Kai had always dreamed of achieving enough status to become an owner of a Pip-Boy, but he never imagined he would be getting one this way. Setting the computer to the side, he pulled the manual out and began to go over the details once again.
He had read it before, but didn’t see the need to actually wear it while living off the land; it just seemed like a way to damage the device. Now though, he was sure it would be handy and allow him to remain in contact with the mainframe computer located in the bunker. He would of course be lacking any satellite support, but by extending the ELF-Com Uplink Dish, he should have a range of a hundred miles or so. Considering the use of extremely low frequencies, even mountains would prove no obstacle as long as he remained within the range of the device. It would auto-update topography and map information as he traveled, although it didn’t specify exactly how.
Finally setting the manual down, Kai picked up the device and strapped it to his arm, locking the anchors in place. Letting out a deep breath, he pressed the power button on the device, and watched it run through the boot sequence. When it finally finished, Kai was treated to all kinds of information being superimposed upon his field of vision. The effect was jarring at first, but he figured he would become accustomed to it soon enough.
With that, he slipped into a sleek insulated jumper and began putting on the intimidating suit of combat armor. Once finished, he looked at himself in the mirror and decided that he might be a little too scary for the ponies as-is. After a moment of contemplation, he decided to use a thick, white bed sheet and turn it into an impromptu mantle. The fabric would conceal most of his armor and give him a hood to cover the top of his helmet, but honestly, he looked more and more like a super villain from Astoundingly Awesome Tales.
“As long as I tell them it’s me, it should be enough, right?” he asked the empty room.
Shrugging his shoulders helplessly, he walked over and grabbed two fragmentation grenades and two plasma grenades. As an afterthought, he grabbed an EMP grenade for curiosities’ sake. Next he walked over to the rack of larger weapons and grabbed something he’d been tinkering with out of boredom over the last few days.
Cradled in his arms was a long barreled energy weapon, the YK42B Pulse Rifle. The prototype weapon was extremely powerful but suffered from some serious drawbacks such as energy consumption and range. Since Kai had nothing but free time on his hands most days, he had modified the rifle and managed what he assumed the final form of the weapon might have been, given more time before the war. Now the range was almost doubled and the ammo burn was reduced a fair amount. As compensation, the power was slightly reduced, but Kai felt the final result was overall an improvement.
After filling his pouches with ammo and a few field devices including stimpaks, Kai looked at himself in the mirror again and let out a whistle, oddly modified by the helmet’s VOX speakers.
“I’m looking pretty badass if I do say so myself,” he said in a fit of unusual excitement for the first time in quite a while.
Anything that messed with them was going to be sorry, Kai was almost sure of it.