“Well?”
The middle-aged commanding officer of the base stood expectantly in the doorway, squinting a bit in the comparatively harsh lighting of the exam room.
Dr. Anderson sighed. “I’ve got a few theories, but no solid evidence to back any of it up. I’ve looked her over as best I can, and about all I can do is wildly speculate.” He leaned on his hands against the sterile metal table, absently staring at the unconscious body of their captive.
“Then speculate,” Autumn said. “This thing’s killed people, and I need to know what it’s capable of, and how it might be of use to us.”
“Well,” Anderson started, standing up and taking a breath to collect his thoughts, “the obvious logical starting point is to assume we’re dealing with ‘one of them,’ considering we found this subject right near the alien saucer we shot down and have never encountered anything similar before. But I’m not so sure it’s as simple as that. You see, we’ve captured a large quadruped, roughly the same size and configuration as a horse, with insect-like wings and a total body covering of hard, chitinous armor.” He rapped on Chrysalis’s foreleg with a knuckle, and nervously chuckled at the absurdity of his words.
“I don’t think it could stop bullets, unless you were far away and shooting with a very small caliber, but it certainly makes for formidable defense from punches, kicks, and that sort of thing. That, coupled with a surprisingly light but nonetheless sturdy and highly muscular body means you’re dealing with something that could probably stand up well against a pack of deathclaws, let alone humans. I can’t be sure what the holes in her legs are for, but they seem natural and purposed and not the result of any sort of disease. A pair of ragged but seemingly functional wings means at least limited flight capabilities, and apparently the horn is capable of telekinesis and energy blasts of some kind. She’s also visibly female and has sharp fangs and other teeth.
“Contrast that to the short, bipedal, thin-skinned, and comparatively humanoid aliens we’re used to dealing with, the pilots from this saucer and the one the people at Adams discovered. Those aliens are physically weak and fragile, useless in close combat, and must instead rely extensively on their advanced energy weapons technology. They have no wings, no natural armoring, no telekinetic abilities, no teeth… they couldn’t possibly get any biologically further apart, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
“Normal aliens—which is an oxymoron I never imagined I’d utter without irony—are genderless, and so I suppose it’s only very extremely unlikely that this thing is some sort of matriarchal ‘queen’ figure to the rest of the race, rather than outright impossible. But apart from that, I can’t imagine this creature here being related in any way to the beings we normally think of when talking about aliens.”
Autumn’s brow creased. “Could she be some sort of mutated creature we’ve just never seen on Earth before? If she looks like a horse…”
Anderson shook his head. “I considered that, but her body is completely free of radiation and she doesn’t have the common symptoms of radiation-induced evolution. If she was an insect, we should have seen massive physical growth over the parent species, and perhaps changes to the biology similar to the adaptation of grappler limbs in mirelurks, but no sweeping anatomical changes like the loss of a pair of limbs and conversion to this equine-looking body structure. If her kind came from horses, they’d lose much of their hair, but they wouldn’t spontaneously grow armored exoskeletons and wings. That horn, and your claim that she seemed to genuinely fear your threats as if she was capable of understanding English, are things that radiation can’t even begin to explain. She couldn’t have developed on Earth.”
“So we’re going in circles and have no idea what she is or where she came from,” Autumn said, folding his arms across his chest and slumping back against the frame of the door. That was what Anderson had said at the start of their conversation, and the exact opposite of what Autumn wanted to hear.
“Not…definitively, no. Thinking about her as an alien makes her look like a mutant, but thinking about her as a mutant makes her look like an alien. If that makes any sense. It’s a bit of a biological Catch-22.” Anderson paused a moment. “But what if she were both? What if we think about her as, say, a deathclaw?”
The colonel shook his head. “Anderson, I’ll listen to your speculations if there’s nothing concrete to go on, but if you’ve got a clear answer, then I need to know about it sooner than later. So can we ditch the rhetorical philosophy?”
“Of course, of course,” Anderson raised his hands defensively. “But, you are familiar with deathclaws, right? Unlike your average wasteland creature, they weren’t modified exclusively by post-war nuclear radiation but by government funded genetic engineering. They did mutate a little bit after the Great War just like everything else, but they were originally Jackson’s Chameleons, genetically modified with DNA taken from various other species in order to create the perfect predator. They were intended to take the place of human soldiers in certain military operations against the Chinese, but were never fully deployed as intended. After the war, they mutated a bit, lost their color-changing abilities, and of course were eventually partially domesticated by the Enclave through the use of mind-control headgear.”
“I assume this is somehow relevant?”
“Absolutely. When they made deathclaws, a large part of the work was in adding the DNA of other animals to give the creatures more desirable traits as a purpose-built hunter-killer. Here we have something similar—the speed, endurance, and physical strength of a horse, but armored like a giant insect and capable of flight. Plus, she’s got that horn, the mechanics of which are completely foreign to all my understanding of science. Perhaps one could even describe it as…alien?”
“So she’s the result of an alien genetic experiment.”
Anderson shrugged. “Like I said, I can’t prove it, but I struggle to think of any scenario that screams ‘alien world domination plot’ as loudly as this juxtaposition of two distinct yet familiar animal archetypes into a single mutant super soldier capable of taking down three Enclave soldiers in power armor while herself remaining completely unarmed and wearing not a shred of clothing whatsoever.”
“Colonel,” a poorly digitized human voice called from a speaker on the wall, preempting Autumn’s response. “Would you join me and Major Fairlight in the war room? Something rather interesting has just come up.”
“Of course, Mr. President. Just give me a moment to—”
“Now, Colonel,” the disembodied voice chided. “This is important.”
“Yes, sir.” Autumn took a step for the door, but hesitated. “Anderson, I’m going to leave this project in your hands. Keep her sedated for now, until we can move her into a cell and post guards to make sure she doesn’t try to escape. Understood?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll get back to work right away.”
“Good. I’ll make the arrangements once I deal with whatever urgent business this is, and get you a capable support staff to work on establishing communication with her. This has top priority.”
With that, the stern-faced colonel disappeared from the exam room and Anderson was alone with his subject.
“Colonel!” Major Fairlight saluted as Autumn came through the door. His brisk stride carried him quickly out of the sickly yellow corridor lighting and into the icy blue haze that surrounded the imaging table. Fairlight and a sentry bot stood opposite, apparently having been discussing the blurry eyebot camera image displayed on the table’s surface.
“Glad you could join us,” the president’s disembodied voice spoke from the robot, as Autumn climbed the few steps up to the pedestal surrounding the table. “There’s been a bit of a development.”
“So you said a minute ago.” Autumn looked at the frozen camera image and recognized the focus as the iconic domed rotunda of the Jefferson Memorial building, with huge metal pipes sticking out of it in all directions. “What’s this?”
“One of our eyebots picked this up a few hours ago,” Fairlight answered. “Take a look.”
He pressed a button on the table’s control panel, and the static-laced image started animating. For several seconds, the eyebot held steady on the monument, until the blurry figure of a man walked in from the side of the frame. He paused briefly at the door beneath the huge marble stairs, apparently hesitant to enter, but eventually followed through with his purpose and pulled the door open. He disappeared inside, the door closed behind him, and the security feed paused again.
“We need to put together a response,” the president urged.
Fairlight nodded his agreements, but Autumn looked incredulous.
“Forgive me, Mr. President, but what exactly is this?”
“This is the Jefferson Memorial water purifier. Scientists from that beached bucket of bolts at the naval yard tried to—”
“I know what the building is; I was there, and you told me back then that it wasn’t worth our time. I don’t understand why one man walking into the place is cause to drop everything we’re working on, including a live alien captive, and stare at it.”
“We didn’t worry about the purifier before because the Brotherhood of Steel had the place fortified, and they greatly outnumbered us,” he explained. “If they’re restarting the project, now that we’ve had time to build up our strength here, we should act before the Brotherhood has a chance to reestablish themselves.”
Autumn shook his head. “The building’s sat abandoned for twenty years, sir. It’s been used as a super mutant stronghold, a raider base, and a haven for chem addicts in that time. What’s to say this guy is any different?”
“Look at his face,” Fairlight chimed in. He rewound the image to just before the door opened, when the figure made a quick check behind him to make sure he wasn’t being followed. The image magnified itself until the blurry cluster of pixels atop the figure’s shoulders dominated the entire surface of the table.
Fairlight continued, “The computer checked the records, and found the same face on Jefferson Memorial eyebot camera feeds as early as 2251, when construction of the purifier originally began.”
“Think of what could be accomplished if this purifier were made operational, Colonel,” the president added before Autumn could retort. “The Enclave could finally purify the wasteland, once and for all.”
Autumn stared into the blurry clusters of pixels, apparently deep in thought. The Brotherhood had aggressively fortified the facility last time, and as much as Autumn disagreed with their order’s activities on both ends of the nation, they weren’t in the habit of throwing people away unnecessarily. They obviously believed it had potential, at some point in its life, and if its head scientists were returning, that made the case even stronger.
Still, Autumn was hesitant. “Assuming everything could be made to work, then yes, it would be worth taking over.”
“I’m glad you agree,” the president practically sang.
“However,” Autumn continued, “we have no idea if that’s the case, and I’m not comfortable tying down a company of men fifty miles away from home, holding onto an empty ruin. If we’re going to do anything with this information, we’re going to start with reconnaissance, and only commit to an occupation when we’re sure the purifier works.”
“I suppose that’s acceptable,” the president grumbled. “As always, I leave the details of the Enclave’s response in your capable hands, but I do expect a response to be made. Understood? This has top priority.”
The sentry bot beeped, then switched back to its regular monotone. “Remote uplink disconnected. Returning to normal operation.” It wheeled away from the table and off down the hallway leading to the president’s office. The door’s two halves pulled shut behind it and were locked in place by the rotating disc section that descended from above. Autumn was slightly confused by the president’s abrupt departure, but it didn’t make any less sense than the way he’d abandoned all interest in the living, breathing, extraterrestrial life form lying unconscious somewhere down below at the first sign of a working water purifier that he showed no interest in capturing two decades ago.
Eden’s current position on the issue was backed by sound logic—whoever brought fresh water to the wasteland would be revered, able to easily rally support for their cause and at the same time hold the water as a hostage if it became necessary. The Enclave could benefit greatly from the purifier if it was operational, and at present the memorial was almost completely uninhabited. Setting up a presence there before the Brotherhood had a chance to establish itself could give them control over a potentially world-changing asset…or a useless block of marble with pipes sticking out of it. The problem Autumn saw was that the probability of Jefferson being a useless block of marble had increased a little bit with each passing day since it was abandoned, and if the president truly had always valued the purifier as a potential asset, even peripherally, why hadn’t he ever expressed interest in capturing it before, when it had been free for the taking?
The whining of the servos in Fairlight’s power armor broke the silence, as the soldier leaned against the imaging table. “What do you think, sir?”
Autumn took a deep breath. “I say put a few more eyebots in the area, and see what happens. We’ve got a video tape of a man walking through a door. This is a little early to be sending in the cavalry.”
“I agree, but you can’t blame the president for getting excited. This could be a big deal.”
Autumn nodded absently. “And when it becomes a big deal, I’ll be the first person pushing towards taking full advantage of it. Until then, rushing in like a bunch of fools won’t get us anywhere.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll relay the orders to—hey! This is a closed briefing!”
The startled lab technician recoiled into the safety of the doorway. “Oh! I’m…I’m sorry! I-I was just looking for Dr. Anderson. H-he told me to come find him, when I—”
“He’s in the Bio Lab,” Colonel Autumn provided. “Exam room two, on the upper level.”
“That’s where he told me to meet him, sir, but he’s…uh…well, he’s not there.”
“What do you mean, he’s not there? I just met with him.”
He shrugged. “The room was empty, sir. He’s nowhere in there.”
“What about the alien?” Major Fairlight asked. “Tell me he just left it unattended.”
“The bug unicorn thing? I didn’t see it in there, sir…”
“God damn it, Anderson!” Fairlight pounded a fist into the imaging table. “I told that fucker to his face that he was not to move that thing beyond the Bio Lab without an armed escort.”
Autumn pressed a call button on the intercom built into the table. “You posted guards outside the lab. Anderson probably asked them to help move the alien into an open cell. Strange they didn’t check in with you first, though.”
The speakers crackled, picking up a response. “Cell block.”
“This is Colonel Autumn. Did Dr. Anderson transfer a detainee over to you from Bio Lab within the last few minutes?”
“No, sir. It’s been quiet here all day.”
Autumn looked up at Major Fairlight, who slowly shook his head. His anger was obvious even through the emotionless face of his helmet.
“Thank you, soldier,” Autumn said before switching off the intercom. “Where else would he take her?”
“Oh, come on, Colonel, you know what happened.”
“The sedatives must have worn off.” He turned back to the intercom panel, and set it to issue a base-wide alert.
“Attention all Raven Rock personnel,” the colonel’s voice resonated from three different far-off locations at once. “This is Colonel Autumn. Base security has been breached in the Bio Lab. Repeat, base security has been breached. Report to Level 1 stations and secure the main entrance. Presidential override only. Stand by for further orders.”
“We need to get down there and see what’s going on,” Fairlight said, taking his rifle from the railing he’d leaned it against and stepping down from the elevated platform at the war room’s center. He made for the door and didn’t slow down as he neared the still-confused lab technician standing there. “This is still a closed briefing, kid. Clear out, go back to your quarters, and stay there.”
The kid muttered a few words of acknowledgement and scurried off, nearly tripping down the tight stairwell. Fairlight and Autumn followed, hurrying down the stairs and into the long corridor to the junction that separated the storage and personnel quarters from the lab complexes. Fairlight turned left and wound his way around the ceiling braces as soldiers rushed past from all directions, scurrying like dutiful insects in the direction of the main base entrance.
“How the hell did we lose containment on this thing?” Fairlight asked nobody in particular as he ducked under some low-hanging wiring and sidestepped a leaky pipe spewing steam. “How is an armored bug horse capable of subtlety? Where the hell was Anderson?” They turned the corner into the storage annex attached to the Tech Lab, and both men immediately halted.
“Right there,” Autumn answered. In the center of the room, apparently studying a map of the base displayed on an eight-foot glass monitor stretched between two of the structural pillars holding up the roof, was none other than Dr. Anderson himself.
“What the hell, Anderson?” Fairlight barked, throwing up his hands. “You get one of my guys killed trying to reason with an alien, and now put the whole base in danger because you’re busy reading a fucking map to watch it?”
“Colonel Autumn told me to wait to move her, so I thought I’d check in with Dr. Forrester and see how his analysis of the pilot’s sidearm was coming. You…does this alert mean she’s woken up? That’s much too early…”
“Such a fucking amateur,” Fairlight muttered.
“Well…let me help you. Tell me your plans and I’ll try to help get her back. We can’t let her escape the base.”
“She won’t,” Autumn said matter-of-factly. “Everyone’s headed up to Level 1 right now; she’d be up against a small army, and the door itself won’t open without a presidential override.”
Anderson’s brow creased. “But…surely there are other ways out of the base, if she’s desperate enough. We can’t overlook those. The ventilation system, perhaps?”
Fairlight shook his head. “No good. I went over that scenario with Engineering last winter. A human couldn’t fit through those ducts, let alone a horse. And assuming she makes it all the way to the end, there’s giant spinning fans sucking air in from the surface. It’d be suicide. The only other way out is the hangar, and Colonel’s alert will have sent a whole bunch of people that way to make sure it’s secure as well.”
Colonel Autumn frowned. “Given what we’ve already seen of her abilities, that may not be enough. I should have ordered a lockdown on the silo doors, as well.”
One of the few soldiers assigned to guard the Tech Lab rushed up, interrupting the conversation. “Colonel? Major? The Bio Lab door guards just called up on the intercom, and they don’t understand why we’re on alert. It’s all situation normal down there; Dr. Anderson and a lab technician are the only ones who’ve been in or out for hours.”
“Something is definitely up,” said Fairlight. “We need to get a team to check the lower level. She’s probably still hiding down there hiding somewhere. How else could she avoid attention for so long?”
“We can’t risk uncovering the entrance. Get these men here together, and we’ll head down and search. Anderson? I need you to do something for me.”
“Anything, sir. I do feel terrible about all this.”
“Ge to an intercom. There’s one outside and down the hall, to the left. Contact the president and tell him we need the hangar silo doors locked down on his override as well as the main entrance. I don’t want to take any chances.”
“Of course. I’ll go right now.” Anderson rushed out of the room, and Autumn followed Fairlight into the Tech Lab. The small squad of soldiers stood in a semicircle around the prototype suit of Hellfire armor being tested in the middle of the room, confused and hoping for instruction.
“Head up the stairs here and take the back way into the lab,” Autumn ordered. “We’ll sweep through the upper level and then check the storage rooms downstairs.” He started up the stairway and a dozen pairs of footsteps followed him up to the catwalks that ringed the Tech Lab.
“We find this bitch, I’m shooting on sight,” Fairlight declared as he reached the door between labs. “I’m not losing half the base to Anderson’s incompetence.”
“That’s not your decision to make, Major,” Autumn reminded him. “We might be able to use her to our advantage, but she’s of a lot less use to us dead. We take her alive, if at all possible.”
Fairlight swung a fist into the door. “Dammit, Colonel, you saw what that thing did at the power station! She’s of even less use to us when she’s murdering our people and burning the whole base down!”
“Major, if there’s no way to subdue her beyond lethal force, then I will shoot her myself. But if we’ve got her under control and you execute the one alien being who might be capable of understanding human speech, I will bust you back to private and put you on a cleaning detail for the rest of your days, understood?”
“Understood,” Fairlight growled, punching the door control. The central lock spun and the two halves of the door slid into the wall, and the assembled few men in power armor charged into the Bio Lab. Autumn ducked to the side to let them pass, knowing that even the alien’s impressive combat abilities would be at least moderately less effective against the soldiers’ power armor than Autumn’s overcoat. He drew his pistol and followed once all five of them had passed, storming through the door into a scene of utter normalcy.
A startled scientist leapt aside as the party rushed in, instinctively going for his sidearm but not even making contact with the weapon before he realized the intruders were friendlies. Autumn surveyed the lab from the door while the soldiers swung their rifles around, stomping about and checking corners. A chorus of “clear”s above a backbeat of footsteps and servomotors sounded in the colonel’s ears as he noticed how many specimen tanks were unbroken, how many stacks of papers hadn’t been cast to the floor, the shockingly low number of fires that had been started, and the curious absence of any murder victims. Deathclaws had breached captivity on more than one occasion, and the result was almost always a rapidly-climbing body count until the sentry bots could blast the thing into submission with Gatling lasers. That a being altogether more deadly had broken free and not even knocked over a wastebasket…that was very much more disturbing.
“All clear, Colonel!” Fairlight’s voice came from below. “She’s not here!”
“Thank you, Major,” he said absently, turning to the surprised-looking scientist. “Did you see anything?”
“No, sir. Tell you the truth, I didn’t even notice the alien was gone until the alert went out.”
“Then where the hell did she go?” Autumn asked nobody in particular as he stepped outside the room and onto the catwalk that led to the exam room she’d been held in. He’d seen a soldier rush through there, sweeping his rifle all around. That soldier had checked behind the exam table, and pushed aside a medical curtain that could have hid a horse. Then he’d popped out the other side and carried on to link up with another man who’d gone clockwise around the lab’s upper level, seeing no sign of the escaped alien along the way.
But something in the room drew Colonel Autumn’s eye—a large medical cabinet, where the scientists kept their cumbersome environment suits and other exam equipment. The ugly thing jutted out a meter from the wall, and had two doors that together were wider than the one leading out of the lab. Three bulky scientific machines Autumn didn’t know the names for lay clumsily stacked on top of one another right next to the cabinet. That wasn’t something Anderson, quirky and disorganized as he tended to be sometimes, would ever do to valuable pre-war instruments.
“Major Fairlight,” Autumn called down to the lower level. “I have need of you.”
“Right away, sir.” A cadence of footsteps and servomotors followed the major up the stairs. He followed Autumn across the catwalk and into the empty exam room. The colonel pointed at the cabinet, taking careful, quiet steps to reach it. Fairlight stepped lightly, but the whining of his armor’s servomotors couldn’t be silenced.
Something shifted in the cabinet, as if it recognized the presence of the soldiers outside. The stomping around and swinging guns everywhere had certainly spooked it, and now every footstep was rightly considered a threat. Autumn must have heard the movement, too, for he grimaced and clenched a fist in frustration. Calling more men up to help would only destroy all doubt as to their intentions.
She knew they were outside, she knew they’d probably come up here to capture her again. But if she was wrong, and they hadn’t figured her out, then breaking out and starting a fight would only be her end. So she’d wait, until they let their guard down or called more men to help. Then she’d attack. The trick was going to be in taking her out first.
Both men waited, listening for movement within the cabinet. Below there was noise and shuffling about, idle chatter between a soldier and a scientist about whether the whole thing was a drill of some kind. Servomotors and footsteps. Idle, muffled, pointless background noise.
Something shifted in the cabinet, leaning against the back wall. She’d relaxed, assuming she’d escaped their notice.
Colonel Autumn held his pistol aloft and silently flattened himself against the cabinet door, laying one hand on the handle. He leaned to the side, mentally rehearsing the move. Fairlight had power armor and a plasma rifle, and Autumn had a trench coat and a handgun. He’d roll off to the side, letting the more combat-equipped of the two of them take the alien down. But that meant letting Fairlight’s trigger-happiness dictate the fate of their prize.
Something shifted inside the cabinet.
Autumn tilted his head in the direction of the door. “Can I trust you?” he whispered, his eyes pleading with the emotionless metal mask of his companion. Of all the orders he’d given Fairlight in the years they’d worked together, this one had to be the one to make the stoic warrior consider insubordination. A court-martial couldn’t resurrect the dead, but trying to take down the alien himself was suicide.
Something tapped against the cabinet’s back wall.
Fairlight nodded. “Yes, sir.” He pointed his plasma rifle at the cabinet and squared his stance.
“Subdue only,” Autumn reminded him one last time. “We want her alive.”
Something banged against the cabinet’s side. Whatever was in there was clearly awake and aware of what was to come.
Fairlight nodded faster, agitated. “Understood, sir.”
Autumn yanked the handle down and pulled open the door. Fairlight charged forward, shoving his rifle emitter right into the cabinet.
“DON’T YOU MOVE YOU FUCKING—wait, Dr. Anderson?”
“What?”
But so it was—the unmoving body of the eccentric biologist lay slumped against the side wall of the cabinet. His head slid sideways and bumped against the wall, making the same sort of noise they’d already heard several times. Colonel Autumn immediately crouched and put a hand to Anderson’s neck, checking for a pulse. “He’s only unconscious.”
“But what’s he doing in the closet? And who the hell were we just talking to five minutes ago?”
Autumn stood up, mind racing with possibilities. He mentally went over everything they’d said, the whole sequence of events from discussing the alien with Anderson to kicking in the door to the Bio Lab. They’d met Dr. Anderson in the storage annex up on the level above, that was certain. Unless he and Fairlight both had somehow shared the same hallucination. The only possibilities were that Autumn was currently asleep in his quarters, dreaming the whole thing, or...
“Major.”
“Colonel?”
“Don’t ask me how, because I haven’t the slightest idea yet, but the Dr. Anderson we talked with earlier was the alien we captured. I’m certain of it.”
“What? How is that even possible?”
“I said don’t ask me how, Major. But think about it—when we found him, he was looking at a map of the base. One of the first things he said was ‘how else could she get out,’ and then he played you for information and got us to admit we’d dropped the ball on locking down the hangar. Then he tried to act all helpful and got me to let him tell the president to do it. How much do you want to bet...”
Autumn went over to the wall and hit the call button on the intercom, attempting to contact the hangar. The speaker remained silent for several seconds with no reply. He hit the other lab call buttons, and was met with silence once more. The president, who never left his office and was always available, wouldn’t pick up. Even the cell block, just outside the door and around the bend, refused to answer the call.
“The whole system.” Fairlight shook his head in dismay. “She knocked out the entire communication system.”
“We need to get down to the hangar, now.”
“Agreed.”
Autumn started for the catwalks, and Fairlight followed close. “Base intercoms are down,” he told the few soldiers below as he walked, “and Dr. Anderson’s unconscious in exam two. Somebody get him medical attention, and then everybody report to the hangar. That’s where our escaped captive has gone.”
The thundering sound of multiple pairs of power armor boots pounding the metal flooring followed the two out of the Bio Lab and back upstairs, through the storage annex where’d they’d met ‘Dr. Anderson’, and down the hallway that led towards the hangar. With all the ambient noise of the base’s ventilation and climate control systems banging and clattering in his ears, it was impossible for Autumn to pick out the whirring of Vertibird blades. They wouldn’t know if they were too late until they reached the hangar itself.
Autumn looked at his watch. “In seventeen minutes,” he started, “she woke up, knocked out Dr. Anderson, locked him in a cabinet, somehow... what, shapeshifted into his body, casually strolled out of the lab, and straight-up asked us how to escape the base. Then she took down the intercom system and hopefully hasn’t already made off with a Vertibird.”
“Still think she’s worth keeping alive?”
Before Autumn had a chance to answer, the small group turned the corner into the cavernous open space that was Raven Rock’s hangar. A small security detail—four power armored soldiers armed with laser rifles, plus their commanding officer and his sidearm—was strewn across the floor in the dimly lit aisle between the rows of parked Vertibirds against the walls. Trails of smoke rose up from a few of the bodies, where their armor had been peeled back and burned. Another’s chestplate had been crushed inwards, and the officer himself had been impaled. A couple score marks from missed energy weapon fire had been burned into the walls and floor opposite the scene, but otherwise there was no sign that the soldiers guarding the hangar had even managed to fight back.
“Where’s the rest of them?” Fairlight asked, the other soldiers fanning out to check the bodies and make sure the alien wasn’t nearby. “There were supposed to be a dozen men here; where’d they go? They could have killed that bitch if they’d been here!”
Autumn believed him. Unless the alien’s armor was somehow capable of absorbing and dissipating energy blasts, one or two hits would have surely been the end of her. She was fast, agile, and incredibly strong, and her dealing with small groups of Enclave soldiers didn’t surprise him any more than the few occasions deathclaws had breached their cages and done the same thing. But there should have been closer to fourteen soldiers guarding the hangar, not four. They wouldn’t have abandoned their post, especially in a state of alert, unless they were directly ordered to by Colonel Autumn himself.
“She took down the intercoms.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“All she had to do was show up looking like Anderson and tell the men here that I said, or maybe you said, that they were needed elsewhere. They couldn’t question why the order didn’t come over the intercom, because she’d already knocked out the system. They’d have to take her on her word. A few stayed behind, but she could deal with them. All she needed was to clear out the majority of them.”
Fairlight shook his head slowly, unable to comprehend how completely they’d been played for fools. “Forget what I said, Colonel. Death’s too good for her. She pays for this.”
The Vertibird furthest from the door suddenly powered up its rotors, immediately drawing their attention. The double doors at the end of the hangar, which led to a taxiway and the five launch elevators that moved aircraft two and from the surface, rolled open on their tracks. The Vertibird inched forward, slowly turned to pass through them.
“Oh, no fucking way,” Fairlight muttered to himself, launching into a sprint. Autumn and the other soldiers followed, but even taxiing the aircraft was nearly pulling away from them. It completed its turn and set off down the taxiway, with Fairlight nearly catching up to it. They always seemed so much slower from the inside, and Fairlight cursed himself as the tail section stopped getting closer and started pulling away.
His power armor servos whined away, pumping his legs as fast as he could will them, but it wasn’t enough to catch the aircraft. If it turned off and tried leaving from any of the four lifts on the side of the taxiway, he’d have a chance to catch it, but surely the creature that’d systematically outmaneuvered an entire military base wouldn’t make that mistake, and would instead head straight forward to the lift at the end.
Autumn crossed over the threshold into the taxiway right on Fairlight’s heels, half a second before the doors lit up with an otherworldly green aura. The machinery powering them creaked and groaned as if under intense stress, loud enough to be heard despite the spinning blades of the Vertibird, until the doors broke free. Autumn quickly glanced over his shoulder in time to see the rectangle of light from the hangar rapidly narrowing, with a handful of soldiers sprinting to get through in time.
The doors banged together first, followed immediately by another loud sound that had to be a suit of power armor smashing into them. The muffled sounds of clattering metal that came a moment later told Autumn that the whole hydraulic system, only a few steps down from the equipment Vault-Tec used, had been torn apart by the eerie green field.
Up ahead, the aircraft passed the final two turn-offs and entered the farthest lift. Fairlight was barely halfway down the taxiway, and had next to no chance of making it in time. Without breaking stride, he took aim with his rifle, and opened fire. Bolts of plasma zipped off in all directions, hopelessly scorching the walls and ceiling of the taxiway. A few lucky shots hit the Vertibird’s left rotor, burning black scorches into the paint but not damaging the engine itself. The aircraft wheeled itself fully onto the lift and rotated to the side, angling its rotors skyward and preparing to take off. Fairlight blasted away, sending two more bolts of plasma into the rotor and many more into the walls.
The rifle’s microfusion cell ran dry as the lift finally activated, and Fairlight unceremoniously threw it aside before drawing his sidearm. The Vertibird rotor sputtered, as one of its cylinders had very clearly been damaged by the shots. But still the rotor spun, and Fairlight had personally been in ones more damaged than that. His legs were tiring, barely carried on by the assistance of the servomotors, and his shots with the pistol were even less accurate than with the rifle. Tinier bolts of green plasma flew harmlessly into the walls, only occasionally singing the armor on the Vertibird’s damaged rotor.
When he reached the lift, it was already nearing waist height. Fairlight threw himself forward, leaning forwards into a dive. His armored chestplate skidded across the lift’s surface, casting off a few sparks before Fairlight managed to roll himself onto his back. Finally able to aim properly, and only a dozen feet from the Vertibird, Fairlight pointed the emitter of his plasma pistol directly at the rotor hub, and pulled back the trigger as fast as his clumsy gloves would allow.
Autumn grunted, heaving himself up onto the lift and trying to stand upright. His age was working against him, and sprinting down several hundred feet of taxiway after running all over the base essentially non-stop since the alert went out had completely taken the energy out of him. He collapsed to his knees, struggling to get his pistol out of his overcoat.
The lift was less than halfway to the top of the shaft, but the pilot gave up on waiting and threw open the throttle. A harder gust of downdraft rushed through Autumn’s hair, and the damaged rotor belched out a thick cloud of sickly black smoke. The bird was damaged, but still its landing gear lifted gingerly off the pad, and the aircraft was officially flying. Fairlight’s pistol chose that moment to run out of energy, and so he pulled his arm back and hurled the thing at the rotor hub. It struck a blade and exploded into fragments as Fairlight forced himself up to his feet.
From his belt he produced a dull green cylinder with tiny clusters of knobs on the ends. His glove barely fit the safety ring on the end, but when he pulled it free the ends of the device lit up with the same piercing light as the emitters on plasma pistols and rifles. Fairlight hurled the grenade up as the Vertibird ascended further skyward, still aiming for the vulnerable rotor hub at the top. The grenade wedged itself into a gap in the housing, a second before Fairlight’s entire field of vision lit up with green.
The Vertibird leaned hard to its damaged side, the tail section passing inches above Fairlight’s head. Bits of metal showered down as the obliterated rotor slammed into the wall of the lift silo. Its wing broken, the crippled beast fell back onto its landing gear, too hard for them to absorb the impact. The struts exploded under the weight of the craft, and the force of only one operational rotor forced the whole body of the thing to spin.
Fairlight dove to avoid the tail section as it snapped back to the left and nearly took his head off for the second time. The other rotor struck the wall, delicate blades shredding themselves to bits against the unforgiving steel wall of the silo. Tortured screams of ruined metal overpowered the sounds of the dying engine, until the rotor mount cracked and fell away from the body of the aircraft. What was left of the engine seized up and died, crashing sideways into the lift surface and breaking up into several more pieces.
Colonel Autumn covered his head as superheated fragments of the destroyed Vertibird landed on the back of his overcoat. The Vertibird’s intact fuselage spun slightly more, snapping off its tail fins against the silo wall before finally coming to rest facing inwards toward the center. A few more clanks sounded as the last few bits of engine fell back down, then the wrecked fuselage rocked back and almost seemed to sigh.
The lift reached the top of the shaft and halted, leaving the Vertibird and the two Enclave officers standing out in the middle of a mountaintop wilderness. Fairlight raised a hand to block out the blinding sunlight until his power armor’s eyepieces had a chance to polarize, and he strode briskly across the lift to the Vertibird. His hand went on the handle, servomotors whined, and the door of the Vertibird ripped effortlessly away like the lid on a can of beans. Autumn watched him reach inside and haul a stunned body that looked like Dr. Anderson out into the light. He shoved the alien to the ground, then pulled back his leg and delivered a firm kick to her gut.
Autumn stood up and drew his pistol, wary of another magical outburst. The alien was on the ground, stunned, and Fairlight was working off all the rage from seeing fellow soldiers getting killed. He swung half a dozen punches into fake-Dr.-Anderson’s ribs before kicking him over onto his front and pinning his head to the ground with a knee. Any sentient creature would realize that another little push and its neck would snap, and if it valued its life it had better remain still.
Queen Chrysalis sighed deeply, feeling the warmth of the sun and smelling the freshness of the air for a fleeting moment before she was inevitably dragged back into the bowels of the underground base. The one in the overcoat, the one in charge, stood over her as before, smug in victory, weapon drawn and pointed at her yet again. She was disoriented, head spinning from the force of the crash, and hadn’t changed form into something that could fight in time. She’d been beaten again, seconds before victory. The aircraft had been in the air, the pilot she’d kidnapped following obediently along with what she told him to. She’d managed to see the sun again...and it all still managed to find a way to come crashing down.
“That’s a neat little trick you’ve got there,” Colonel Autumn said. “I hope for your sake you decide to explain to us how it works, or else the real Dr. Anderson will be taking guesses based on examining slices of your brain.”
Chrysalis tried to look intimidating, forcing a scowl and struggling a bit against the immovable block of metal that straddled her. But she was broken. She had no other options left. She was magically and physically exhausted, and weapons were pointed at her head. She’d lost. Again.
Colonel Autumn tossed the pistol over to Fairlight, who pressed the familiar and uncomfortable barrel of the thing against her assumed skin’s temple. Autumn himself stepped over to a small control panel sticking up slightly from the ground, and activated the lift. The whole mass of the thing heaved and began to descend. The sound of gears grinding rang in Chrysalis’s ears, and Autumn went back over to the wrecked Vertibird to check on the pilot.
Chrysalis watched the shadow of the rim of the silo grow steadily longer, creeping towards her as the platform dropped down into the abyss. She closed her eyes as it washed over her, and she was in shadow once more.