My second before-the-war story

[Wifi]

Note: read my first story (it's here somewhere) to get the most out of this one...


Goodbye Irene

by Wifi

We had the perfect wedding, over one hundred friends, relatives and my service buddies. We had the perfect honeymoon in Tel Aviv, before it was nuked. The perfect NY apartment and neighbors. Perfect car, robot assistant, dog... But not perfect enough for that bitch Irene...

It all started, or better yet ended, with the offer to transfer me from my command in the Brooklyn army headquarters to the BRAIN (Bacteria, Radioactives and Arms INtelligence). I was lucky as a simple army inspector to get assigned to a city base in my hometown, were I could go home every weekend, but now I had the chance to work for the big man himself. Taking this kind of offer meant leaving home for some top secret base, God knows where. My wife Irene first told me not to accept, said she loves me too much and will die without me, but then she heard that by taking the job I will triple my pay and receive two emergency VIP (Vault Important Person) passes. Next thing I know, she is stuffing me in a Taxibot and kissing me goodbye. I should have seen it then...

I told the Taxibot my destination, a small civilian port just outside the city limits. The Taxibot calculated the trip will cost me around 2$ for the service and 20,000$ for the gas, thanks to the fuel shortage crisis. Not wanting to pay, I found and inserted my NSA membership holocard in the credit card scanner and confiscated the veichle in the “interest of national security”, ordering him to go. He took of like a rocket, seems even the robots were scared chip-less of the military back then. When we arrived at the port it was already night. As I was getting my bag out of the trunk, the Taxibot thanked me for using his services, closed the trunk nearly chopping my bag in two, and once again rocketed away. When the smoke cleared I started looking for the boat that was supposed to take me to the USS Theory, or as the grunts call it, the “spook boat”. It wasn’t really hard to find my ride. A black military Hovershark was docked right in front of me, but with the night it was almost invisible. It was just floating there, threatening the world with his shark design and silently roaring fusion engine. Suddenly, I heard footsteps behind me. I turned around and saw a guy in Black Power Armor approaching. Turning on his Gauss pistol he asked me for identification. To get into the character, I made the classical “who the fuck are you to ID me” pose and gave him my holocard. He examined it, turned off his weapon and saluted. I saluted back and ordered him to be at ease. Holstering his weapon he identified himself as my armed escort to the base. We got onboard, released the magnetic docking field and left the port at maximum thrust.

The sea was silent and peaceful, but not for long. I was already snoozing when the storm came. Roaring wind, heavy rain and waves as big as the safety wall around Detroit were not a pretty sight. We would be already sinking, if it wasn’t for the Hovershark’s ability to cut through waves like a knife through water. I jumped and ran into the control bridge, where my brave escort was sleeping like a baby in the driving seat, snoring in melody with the autopilot’s beeping. My voice exploded through the cabin:
· What the fuck are you doing!? You’re taking us in a middle of a tycoon!!
When his heart attack ceased, he explained that it was the standard approach route to the base.
· And where is this fucking base of yours, at the bottom of the sea!?
· No sir, it’s in the eye of this tycoon, sir!
· Are you fucking with me, private?
· Sir, no sir! The USS Theory is located at the eye of this artificial tycoon, sir!
I heard of mirage fences and ThreeMonkeey’s, but this one, to create an entire tycoon to hide a base, that one tops it off. Then, as quickly as it came, the storms stopped, the moon and stars showed up to reveal the peaceful sea in the tycoon’s eye. And there it was. The Theory, biggest nuclear vertibird carrier in the naval arsenal, along with several destroyer ships sailing around her and some vertibirds taking off her main launch deck.

Onboard the Theory things looked peaceful. Well, it did look peaceful, until I reached the BRAIN department. People running around, bosses screaming, nukecofees being spilled, papers flying. With all those nukes, viruses and wars out there, this was the busiest department of them all, even more than the president’s private secretary penthouse. I found my new boss somewhere in the middle of the fuss. I barely said my name when he threw a “lunchbox” in my face a told me to get to work. The “lunchbox” was the nickname for the holodisk which contained everything you needed for an assignment, from the initial objective and information, to all the authorizations and passes to get the job done.

My first job took me to the Anchorage frontline. The command believes that someone is selling military FieldMeal supplies to the Canadian population. Food contraband was not our problem, but the fact that FieldMeals are in some way considered part of standard military arming it makes it our problem. It all stinked like a dump job to me. In the archives I dug up the order forms for the frontline. I found a supply bunker that requested 50% more FieldMeals than usual. I got together some armored MP’s, planing to bust through the door hoping someone shits himself and confesses. Arriving at the bunker door we noticed a big hole in the eastern wall, probably from a Canadian kamikaze bomber. The thing that got our attention was that the entire hole was sealed with hundreds of Fieldmeal packs. I found the guy in charge of the bunker, and he explained that it was the only way to seal the gap, since 98% of all backup construction material is being redirected for building Vaults. They got the idea to use FieldMeals when they heard stories of a Canadian powertank unit attacking and surrounding a supply convoy, forcing them to dig in. When backup arrived the only survivors were found inside a circle of trucks loaded with FieldMeals which have stopped several direct shell hits. Since then soldiers have been using FieldMeals for good luck and to fix bunkers along the entire front, even that some guy made a suit out of them. That explained the shortage of FieldMeals, which meant there was no illegal selling to the cand’s, and no more work here for me. I got back to base, only to get a new lunchbox thrown at me.

The second job seemed more exciting than the first. I was to find and intercept a stolen vertibird from the naval hangars on Cuba. The local command suspects that a dezerting general has stolen classified data and is using the vertibird to reach a Chinese subship somewhere in the Trash Islands area. I was assigned an emergency strike team, and three vertifalcons, five time faster than a standard vertibird. The Trash Islands area was the official USA thrashcan. After the president, supported by the Church, declared the United States a “Holy Land”, the new laws banned all kinds of junkyards and garbage dumps on sacred USA ground. For that reason US troops occupied the Falklands, a “gift” from the new Ireland Kingdom, former United Kingdom. With the population kicked out, the garbage blimps began the transport of all junk, new and old, to the Falklands, now known as Trash Islands. After a half hour of searching through the garbage mountains, we found the vertibird. Instead of meeting an enemy subship, it looked more like it met the ground. We landed, blew away the doors and stormed in. I think some of the guys were laughing their guts out, hidden inside their armors. Instead of a dezerting general with top secret data, we found a drunk private with a case of Cuban booze. Boy wonder here decided to take a ride to grandma’s house in California, but then decided to stop at the Trash Islands to take a piss. Instead of landing he threw up on the command panel and crashed. It even turns out he is some generals son, so his daddy pulled some strings and got us to save his ass. These assignments are getting better and better.

After some more decent jobs like toy gun smuggling and Ebola chickens, I was to investigate an unauthorized nuclear launch start in a silo near Seattle. Naturally, the command suspected of a Canadian sabotage attempt to start a nuclear war between us and the Chinese. And naturally, it turned out that some idiot janitor sat on the launch controls, while the entire crew was screwing around with light bulbs. The only thing that stopped Armageddon this time was the third maintenance officer that was practically running the entire installation on his own. Regardless my report indicated that it was just a “simple” accident, command decided to punish the janitor as an example to all other janitors, and to congratulate the officer for the bravery in unfolding and stopping a terrorist plot against the people of the United States. The next day we had both the public execution and congratulation ceremony done together, to save time and pay only once for the music band. Life and death are quick when it comes to world-ending errors.

For the next years with some better assignments, a bunch of kissed asses and personal favors I climbed the ranks, reaching the position of a counterstrike supervisor. All that time I hardly ever seen my Irene, only when I was sent back to NY for work. Little by little her Satmails stopped, and my doubts began. Somewhere in the last mail she mentioned some science officer that moved next door and that they became good friends. I didn’t like the sound of that, so I dug up his service file. He was a simple lab rat working in a FEV vault east of Los Angeles. Dead wife, no kids, clean service record, class blue authorization, bla, bla, bla... He recently got transferred to the NY Black Tongue virus prevention squad on Manhattan. I was about to pack up and go home to see what exactly is going on, but I was pulled back for a high class meeting. A Vault-Tec advisor, the Advanced Arsenals chief scientist and myself were to form the committee for the Beowulf project. Our task was to construct, equip and activate a small silo with a single missile bay and a one man crew. The entire system would be self sufficient, completely isolated from the entire army infrastructure. The main goal was to have a backup nuke, the “better to have it and not need it then to need it and not have it” type... Vault-Tec would do the building, AA-s will provide the missile and launch equipment, and I will get the supplies and the man to run it.

Two months later everything was set up, all we needed now was the man to run it. He had to be an expert in the field of silo maintenance, and strong enough not to go crazy down there all by himself. The Seattle guy was the best choice we could find. Orphan project, advanced arms training, the SOLO psychology training certificate, all the stuff needed for this job. We brought him in for an interview, and offered him the job. We didn’t say it, but if he accepted, the official story would be death by vertibird crash, and if he refused, he would have died in a vertibird crash. He accepted. That made my job here done. Just when I thought it was all over so I could finally get out, they pulled me back in again. This time it was a meeting with the high command council. Seems I will be one of the only two people who will survive the entire Beowulf project. I was assigned the DS squad (demolitions and assassinations) with the the task of destroying all evidence and people connected in any way to Beowulf, me and the silo itself excluded. I was pretty sure what would happened to me if I refused, so I had no choice but to do it. It was a dirty and bloody year I wish to forget.

Done that, I finally caught a flight home, only to find a half empty house and a Dear John letter on the table near a ExpressDivorce envelope. First she wrote some crap about me not being there for her, then some more crap about her feelings, and a shitload of crap about her newly found happiness with Mr. lab rat. Quick little fuck, it didn’t take him long to forget his dead wife and hump mine. There was a P.S, she left me our picture over the fireplace, to remember the good times. I looked up at the picture, our enlarged honeymoon photo from Tel Aviv, showing us as a happy couple in love. That made me snap. The neighbor found it strange to see bullets and what looked like picture pieces fly through his dinning room wall, along with some naughty words coming through the holes from nextdoor. When the clip was empty, I reloaded, holstered the gun, cleaned my uniform. The only thing I had in my head was how to find my two love birds, and wish them good luck with a pair of 10mm JHP. And I did found the way.

As soon as I got onboard the Theory I ran to the PSS room (personnel satellite surveillance), to find out where the rat is, with Irene surly nearby. As I suspected, they where back at his old FEV base. I got the necessary clearance to get into the base, checked out a Jackhammer with some clips, and started running to the vertibird hangar, but a nuclear holocaust stopped me on the way. First the red lights kicked in, and soon after the alarm sirens started their song. This particular alarm sound was known amongst soldiers as the feared “Dead Man’s Gasp”, the last warning sound before the bombs drop. The loudspeakers started yelling something about a dive protocol being activated, but I had no idea what that meant since I didn’t take the time to read my “USS Theory for dummies” guide. I quickly found the file on my PipBoy 500 and looked up the words “Dive protocol”. You’re gonna love this one. The “Dive protocol” is the automatic defense mechanism that starts when a nuclear attack is imminent. What happens is that the entire Theory completely seals itself hermetically, and begins to sink to the safety of the bottom of the ocean. Something like a one way ride down away from hell. That idea reminded me of when I was screaming at my escort about him taking us at the bottom of the sea, and realized the little motherfucker could not have been more right. With the ship sinking, I sat down on the floor and started laughing about two things. One was that my ass will probably make it to the end of a nuclear war, and the other that I can’t get to Irene anymore, not from down here anyway.

With the hitting of the ocean’s bottom “Dead Man’s Gasp” ceased. For half an hour it was just silence aboard the entire Theory. People just walking by or sitting, all without saying a single word. It was like a funeral ceremony for everyone who was left behind. But my mind was not with the dead, more with the living I wanted dead. Since they where in a vault, there are pretty good chances they are still alive and kicking, but I had no way of knowing until the survival reports come in. After a month, the first reports started coming in from surviving army bases. The first report was from the Antarctica radar station, proudly announcing that our counterattack was 95% successful. On the question who was the enemy that launched against us, they replied that the attacker was unknown, so our defenses attacked every country with nuclear launch capability. I believe that they knew who attacked us, but still decided to attack everyone because after the initial counterstrike USA would be left unable to attack for some time, leaving us vulnerable against other remaining nuclear forces. Later we got reports from five surviving vaults, on of them being the Los Angeles FEV vault. On their survivors list I found my Irene, making my worst fears come true. Something had to be done.

Later that day I entered the communication deck, ordering the crew to leave. I found the outer communications terminal and I wrote: “You are authorized and ordered to deploy the LRA-B 5000 using the coordinates received. Standard nuclear deployment procedure advised. Deployment should occur inside the time limit of five hours starting from the receiving of this message. Deviation from the orders will be marked as treason and will be punished accordingly. Good luck, and God help us all.” I found the FEV vault coordinates and attached them to the message. The communication torpedo was on standby, all I needed now to kill Irene and get myself in front of a firing squad was a little push of a button. A small spark of doubt flew through my mind, but it was too late. The torpedo was out of his tube and on the way to the surface. After breaking out of the water it blew apart releasing the comrocket, which continued the journey to the skies. After reaching the needed altitude, the comrocket exploded, releasing the coded message inside for the whole World to hear it, but only one man to understand it.

I sat down waiting for the destruction report and the MP’s. I guess they were right after all. It is better to have one and not need it, then to need it and not have it. I tried to find some regret for my actions, but I failed. I decided to send one last message, this time to my dear Irene...

Later that day, all the still working receivers in the World received the following puzzling message:

“Open your ass cheeks wide bitch, I have a surprise present coming in just for you...”