Chapter 130: Suicide March

Chapter 130: Suicide March

I gave the door a gentle shove.This chapter is updated by nov(e)(l)biin.com

BANG!

The wind must have caught it or something, because it flew open, depositing several handfuls of displaced ash into the air, and hit the opposite wall with a loud crash. I walked through the open door to try and get my bearings: I was now outside, obviously, on the partially destroyed section of a building half buried in the cliff face. The walls and ceiling had been ripped away, revealing me to be much closer to the gigantic tower at the end of the crevasse. Pipes, girders, and other pieces that had once been structurally integral were twisted and ripped away, sticking out of the broken walls and floors at odd angles.

"Right," I said aloud, the hum of ED-E's anti-grav repulsors providing a comforting background noise. "That's where we're gonna find Ulysses. Now we've just got to figure out how to get there..." The building we'd entered the tunneler-infested cliff to get around was quite a ways off to my left, but this part of the canyon was littered with collapsed buildings and twisted wreckage. It was like I was looking at a wheat field made entirely out of jagged metal, the broken and sharpened ends of pipes, and crumbling concrete.

"Wow." Sue said, a bit awestruck. "Now that is a fall..."

"Any suggestions on how we can get to the temple, ED-E?" I asked, holding onto the edge of a half-broken windowsill to aid in surveying the landscape.

Silence.

I mentally cursed myself out with every obscenity I knew. Cautiously, I backed away from the edge, grimacing under my helmet and gripping the G36 reflexively before turning to face the now still and silent ED-E. For a while, neither of us said anything.

"Well?" I growled out, breaking the silence. "I know you're in there, Ulysses." A satisfied 'Hurm' issued from ED-E's speaker.

"Thought that explosion - that building falling deep in The Divide might have been your work." Ulysses said simply. I was confused for a moment, until I looked up. A dirty great cloud of reddish-orange smoke (illuminated from below) was billowing out from a spot above the canyon edge. I did the math in my head, and it was... yeah, I could believe that was the result of that tunneler cavern collapsing. Maybe.

"Yeah? So what?" I asked, circling around the possessed ED-E; the speaker followed me. Ulysses grunted out a single curt laugh. Or maybe he was clearing his throat. I couldn't really tell.

"Knew it wouldn't kill you. Maybe close... I knew you'd survive... but no need to go any farther." Before I could question, Ulysses suddenly made ED-E start floating up and away from me. "You've brought me what I need that machine with you. Sealed in the Hopeville silo. Needed someone to unlock it... bring it Home. Now, the signal is strong enough... so there's no need for you to carry it any more. I can call your machine to me."

"Whoa! Hey!" I yelled, a panic starting to tug at the back of my head and getting steadily stronger. "There's no need for that! It's me you want, remember? There's no need to -" I leapt forward halfway through speaking, trying to get a grip on ED-E, but failed. The eyebot flew swiftly above me, far, far out of reach. "No! Let him go! It's me you want! Me! He's got nothing to do with this!" I jumped several times, but it was useless. The eyebot continued to stare at me.

"It is part of The Divide." Ulysses said, and I finally stopped jumping up and down. "Whatever use you had for it is nothing compared to its primary function. And it shares our history."

"No, he doesn't!" I yelled, putting emphasis on the word. "You're not taking ED-E from me!"

"But it is already done. The machine you brought is mine now. It's coming home." Ulysses paused, and must have picked up on my white-knuckle hatred because he decided to goad me further: "I'll reduce it to parts. Just enough to function... to be aware of what's happening. It is inconsequential what is inside is all that matters. All the machines here, made of wreckage from The Divide, and all that was brought here. Inside its frame, it carries the message you brought here... and it'll do what it was programmed to do: whatever it can to go home. The giants here will listen. I'll bring The Divide to your home. Let its flag burn, just like you let The Divide burn."

"No, you won't," I said, trying to hide the waver in my voice with rage. "I'll stop you. I'll save ED-E, I'll do whatever I can to keep the missiles from launching, and I'll save the people in the wasteland from your madness. Because no matter what you throw at me, no matter what you put in my way, no matter how hard you try or where you hide, you can't stopme!" I was shaking all over, and Ulysses was silent for a solid minute, keeping ED-E above me and out of reach.

"What do you think you are, Courier?" Ulysses asked simply. "Do you think yourself a hero? A... savior?" He spit out the word like it didn't taste right on his tongue, and he scoffed. "No... no, you are no savior. Your talents lie elsewhere." When I didn't press the issue, he continued. "The truth is, Courier, that you are nothing more than a weapon. A tool, fit only to destroy. The same as me."

"I... I'm nothing like you," I said, as firmly as I could manage. I couldn't manage it very well, because I kept hearing Benny's words from that dream so long ago echoing over and over again in my mind:

"You're a weapon, Courier. You are becoming a person of mass destruction. And you'll need to be, if you're going to survive the coming storms."

"Really. I came to terms with what I am a long, long time ago," Ulysses growled back. "When will you?" He scoffed again. "It takes a strong man to deny what's right in front of him. It's time you stop lying to yourself: none of this would have happened if you had just stopped. You could have turned away at any time, and gone back home. But on you marched, and for what? Because you had to make one last delivery... and that's why I knew you'd come, Courier. Couldn't stay away. It's who you are." Ulysses paused, as if to let that sink in, and then said one last thing:

"Big Mountain access code... Ulysses. Command override... Navarro."

Everything happened at once, and I didn't have time to react. The dish on the top of ED-E's chassis that he'd been using to unlock the various dish shaped receivers lit up and crackled with blue lightning just as a red glow materialized from his laser. There was a sound like thunder, and it was like I was run over by a truck. I felt myself get thrown backward, crashing into the wall near the door with a heavy thud, and I was briefly dazed.

"SHEASON!" I made out Sue's scream through the fog and haze in my mind. "He's getting -"

"ED-E!" I yelled, scrambling to my feet as quick as I could to run after the eyebot... but it was useless. By the time I started running, he was already far out of reach. By the time I screeched to a halt at the edge of the building, grabbing hold of one of the broken pipes to keep myself from falling off, ED-E was just a tiny glinting speck in the distance.

He silently sped off, flying with an intense speed and purpose straight for Ulysses temple.

Sue and I didn't say anything for a very long time. I don't know what was going on in Sue's digital mind, but I was... Ulysses words had cut me deep. A lot deeper than I wanted to admit, even to myself. I was lost in my thoughts as I tried to navigate the twisted and broken landscape, trying to find a way to Ulysses' Temple.

Was he right? Could I have just gone back? If I hadn't even come to The Divide, then the Ashton silo nuke might never have been launched. Ulysses wouldn't have ED-E, and he wouldn't be threatening to launch even more missiles. But he knew exactly what buttons to push, and exactly what to say to goad me into doing exactly what he wanted. If I hadn't been so easily provoked... could this really have all been avoided?

I had to force all these thoughts out of my head. It was far too late to go back now. He had ED-E, and I wasn't going to leave my friend. Maybe his claim of needing something from inside ED-E was a bluff, or maybe not. Honestly, it didn't matter. I had to rescue my friend, stop Ulysses, and find some way to keep the nukes from launching.

I wasn't the man Ulysses thought I was. I... I couldn't be. I had to prove that I wasn't, if only to quiet my own doubts.

"This is it," I said, coming to a stop. Off in the distance, I heard a few faint pops and bangs of combat going on somewhere else.

"This is... what?" Sue questioned, a bit confused.

"This is our way across." I said simply. I was staring at the collapsed half of a building. It was like the side of a skyscraper had been ripped apart by a can opener, and the side had peeled off to lean against the rest of the rubble. Somehow, it hadn't buckled in on itself and was mostly intact providing a rough bridge from where we were over to the silo in the cliff face. If we could use that to cross, we could completely bypass the twisted and broken wreckage below.

"Across THAT?!" Sue squeaked, absolutely terrified. "Are you nuts?! That's a suicide march!" To be fair, she did have a point. Anything in the building that could've been a structural support would be on its side (and therefore completely useless), and there were several sections of the building-bridge that... definitely did not look safe. In the same way that a deathclaw nest didn't look safe. It was bowed and bent in several places, so that it resembled a rickety rope-bridge much more than a concrete skyscraper.

"Yeah, well..." I grumbled, making my way over to the building. "What else is new?"

It's never usually a good sign when concrete reinforced with steel rebar starts to creak and groan. But on the plus side miniscule as it was it let me know I was in the right place and had found my way to the skyscraper bridge.

"This is a monumentally stupid idea," Sue said, her voice wavering and flanging slight in the middle.

"thE lIOn hEArt shAll dIvIdE thE hOUsE Of stEEl!" yelled the pair in the back who spoke in unison. "thEy shAll grOw strOngEr frOm thE AshEs!"

"What does this all mean?" Sue asked. I shook my head.

"I don't know. I think they might just be broken, and are shouting nothing but gibberish..." I muttered, sliding down a collapsed wall that had turned into a ramp. I'm not sure I believed that, however, and kept listening.

"yOU mUst sEEk OUt thE gIAnt's shAdOw," the lead eyebot said again, and suddenly all the other eyebots fell back and went silent. "thE gIrl On thE mOOn wIll AId yOU."

I halted in my tracks, and turned to face the eyebot with the exposed speakers. The cameras twitched erratically, all three of them looking me up and down.

"Wait... are you... are you talking about..."

"I'm sOrry," the lead eyebot bowed and backed up, floating away from me; the other eyebots kept a close orbit as it departed. "thAt's All wE cAn sAy."

I was almost at the end of the building-bridge. At least, I hoped I was nearing the end... The creaking and shaking under my feet had only gotten worse, and I knew that this damn thing was itching to crumble at any moment.

My mood wasn't helped as I turned over the words of those eyebots over and over again in my head. I wanted to ignore it. It was just the inane, incoherent ramblings of a quintet of damaged eyebots. And yet...

"Sheason!" Sue squeaked quietly. "I'm picking up movement behind us!"

"More eyebots?" I asked, checking my motion tracker. I didn't see anything on my HUD...

"No... bigger." She sounded very worried and then, a massive blip appeared at the edges of sensor range. A deep, terrifying roar bellowed from a spot above me, shaking the walls and floor of the already weakened structure with sheer volume.

"Fuck." I breathed, my voice going hoarse. The building shook again, this time from an obvious footfall, displacing clouds of ash and dust all around me.

I didn't wait for the deathclaw because it couldn't have been anything else to show up. I just scrambled over the terrain, trying to put as much distance between myself and the monster behind (or maybe above, if the sound was any indication...) me as I possibly could.

I clicked the button on my belt and shifted into transparency as I ran. It was a vain hope, but maybe being invisible would distract the monster long enough for me to find a more permanent avenue of escape. The rhythmic thudding of its heavy footfalls kept up with me, shaking the building to an unhealthy degree, and that was only made worse by its insistent roaring. Off to the side, I saw pieces of the floor and walls give way, and collapse entirely, creating huge gaps that dropped onto the spiky and precarious landscape below.

There was a momentary pause in the shaking and rumbling and roaring. The sounds of collapsing buildings and deathclaws gave way to something just as terrifying:

Tik. Tik-ik-ik-k Ti-ik-tik.

I didn't stop. I just kept going as fast as I could through the ruined, steadily collapsing building, an advancing deathclaw behind me and a steadily increasing source of radiation in front. I glanced down at the motion tracker again, and aside from the huge sensor blip behind me (right at the edge of the trackers range), there was now a cluster of smaller blips right in front of me.

I put two and two together. I shouldered the mostly empty G36 and pulled the laser detonator out of my duster, and kept moving forward. The terrain was starting to level out, and the sounds of groaning were getting fainter, so I must have finally reached the other side.

I vaulted through an open window, and found myself in the Marked Men camp I'd been expecting. Several small structures, barely bigger than single-person tents, were built in the ruins near a trio of smoldering campfires in various places around the camp. The ticking from my Pip Boy got more frantic, because right in the center of all these buildings was a Titan-II warhead.

A flare shot into the sky from behind one of the buildings, and the Marked Men emerged from the ruins, guns at the ready. One of the Marked Men in the back was wearing the top half of one of those metal masks I'd seen before (his red chin was exposed), and I saw him heft up a massive sword made from a car bumper in the split second before he was surrounded by blue electricity and vanishing.

I made my way as quietly as I could around the perimeter, but it soon became clear that the Marked Men weren't interested in my mostly transparent form. A deafening roar bellowed from the ruins behind me, and I cast a glance over my shoulder in time to see the deathclaw that had been following me leap down with a crash that shook everything violently. The Marked Men all opened fire in a hail of bullets (and a few lasers), but none of it seemed to even phase giant monster.

While they were busy killing each other, I snuck around the edges of the fight, thankful for Sue's therm-optic camo. I did have to duck once or twice, either to get out of the way of a ricochet or to dodge the bloody pieces of Marked Men thrown my way, having been ripped apart and batted aside like so many ragdolls.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Sue whispered as I finally got in position, and decloaked to line up my shot with the laser detonator.

"Probably not," I admitted.

The deathclaw was roaring again, one of its oversized claws resting on the top of the warhead, and the other swiping furiously at the figure riding on its back. Most of the Marked Men had already been killed, but the one in the mask with the sword was still up a little worse for wear, it must be said and was swiping at the back of its head with its comically oversized sword.

I held down the trigger, and a fusillade of lasers erupted from the laser detonator to strike the side of the warhead. Gouts of flame emerged from the side, escaping out of seams in the metal or from rivets that had suddenly found themselves displaced. The deathclaw's grip on the top of the warhead slipped and it banged its head on the top of the cone; the Marked Man tumbled, losing his helmet, and he had just enough time to look surprised in the brief second while he still had a face.

The warhead exploded, blasting me in the face with heat and wind, knocking me flat on my ass. And a good thing too barely a second later, a huge chunk of shrapnel sliced through the air right where my head had been. A white hot ball of fire expanded from the warhead, swiftly cooling into a reddish-orange fireball, and then a swiftly darkening cloud of smoke and sparks. All the structures around the camps collapsed from the shockwave, and all the campfires outside the blast radius were snuffed out from the force.

"Augh!" I coughed out, trying to get back on my feet. "Fuck... should've backed up further..."

A cracking of crumbling concrete began to get louder in the wake of the explosion. Even though most everything between me and it was on fire, I could still see most of the building-bridge I'd used to cross over to this side... and then I watched as it began to fold in on itself. Piece by piece, it fell, sending huge clouds of dust shooting into the air, and shaking the ground with the force of an earthquake as the broken building refused to hang on to its structure any longer.

I walked through the wreckage and fire in silence for a few moments. I was surrounded by the haze of fire, ash, smoke, dust, and cinders. My Pip Boy's Geiger counter was still clicking away, but it was less frantic than it had been a moment before. I tried in vain to collect any useful supplies, but it was no good. These Marked Men must have been as hard-up for ammo as I was or they'd used it all trying in vain to fight the deathclaw. Or the ammo had been vaporized by the warhead exploding.

"Shit..." I said, looking down at the new edge where the collapsed building had been. "Not gonna get back that way..."

"Our avenues of escape by foot are swiftly diminishing, it must be said," Sue proclaimed, in a strange tone of voice that both conveyed worry and an unusual lack of concern. Somehow.

"Yeah," I turned around and looked back and then up. "At least we're here." The Marked Men had made their camp right next to the silo lodged in the side of the canyon wall, and it was much more menacing and altogether imposing up close. It stretched up to the sky, and the pulsating red lights along the side of the silo walls gave it an ominous look, more fitting of a Doom Fortress than a missile silo.

"Yes, we're here," Sue said. "The base of a missile silo filled with who knows how many nuclear warheads, all prepped and ready to blow up the world."

"And we're the only ones who can stop it," I said with a nod, making my way to the large blast door I saw set into an alcove at the base of the wall.

"Nothing like a bit of pressure," Sue added.

"Hey, that's my line!"