Chapter 62: Chapter 59

Every member of 1st Platoon was having a grand time leading their older comrades from the 2nd into battle. Well, it was more of a suppression operation at this point. The Eversors and Sentinels were doing most of the killing, while troopers like Edward and the other Nexus citizens were in charge of restraining any and every Institute inhabitant. Synth or human, as long as they didn’t put up too much of a fight, they’d be bound and rounded up.

If they did put up a fight, they’d be bound and rounded up anyway, but only after limbs were broken. There’d be a good chance that these more resistance prisoners would be tagged for processing at Blacksite Tleilax. Even Edward hoped that the poor fucks didn’t earn that trip. No one knew exactly what happened down there, but everytime Sev and Curie finished their visits there they always introduced new breakthroughs that brought up the disturbing question of just how exactly they discovered such things.

Like the synth detector, a device that looked like a flashlight that, when pointed at synths, robotic or human looking, caused them to drop to the floor in a deactivated heap. Each member of both platoons had the device strapped onto their weapons or wrists as they swept the Institute floor by floor. It made the hostile encounters seem almost comical as the first thing that happened was having a bunch of people or robots just faint.

Men, women and children were shepherded at gunpoint out of their rooms and hiding spots, then passed over to Sentinel robots for processing. Deactivated synths were just tagged for Sentinels to pick up.

It was a grim task, seeing kids younger than himself crying in fear and confusion, their parents hugging them close to offer them some form of protection. But that’s what you got for pissing off the Nexus. At least none of the captives would be treated as slaves or worse. Everyone had been told to be gentle if they could, and Sev didn’t want any cases of unnecessary abuse.

“You’re all a representative of the Nexus,” Sev had said in a private address to 1st Platoon. “I understand that you might hate raiders, slavers and such, but don’t stoop down to their level with sadism. You’re better than them. You don’t have to stop hating them, but hate them coldly; they don’t deserve you wasting your effort being angry at them.”

Everyone got the message, and just like that Edward saw the bloodlust change in people like Sylvie and Lynn. Suddenly everyone was trying to operate with a colder efficiency similar to the Eversor assaultrons or Centurion sentry bots.

With far less gore, of course.

Some Institute scientists had tried to make a stand earlier with laser rifles and such, but the Eversors ignored the shots and just dove into them. By the time the robots moved on, Edward and his troops had to process a group of basically heads attached to torsos, rolling in shock ground in a puddle of their own blood. That they were still alive was a terrifying testament to the Eversors’ precision and skill.

Good thing Sev had healing arches for this sort of situations, though Edward wasn’t sure these poor fucks could appreciate it.

A glance behind him and Edward saw Sev still up at the top floor, overseeing the whole invasion. Piper and Cait were off on some errand, so it was a rare moment to see him standing alone. Edward refocused himself before he fell prey to daydreaming, urging his platoon onward to clean out every nook and cranny of this sterile looking base.

As they cleared out the rooms and hallways of the Insitute’s vast underground lair, Edward had to admit some appreciation on how clean everything looked. There was an order here, an almost obsessive one that suggested to the platoon leader that the people here thought themselves to be the masters of their world.

They probably thought they had the answer to everything and everything answered to them. No wonder they used human looking robots and made human slaves, it was a show of power over lesser men. These people were worse than slavers, who at least were honest and simple enough with their inhumane motivations.

Both platoons faced virtually no resistance at all as the scoured every nook and cranny, dragging out the odd parent and child huddled in some corner, or a lone scientist hiding in under a bed, between crates, and even a dumb fuck locking himself in the toilet.

Only one major firefight had occurred, where a group of scientists with guns fortified one of the bigger labs. Their raking laser bolts bloomed harmlessly against the shields of the troopers, and while 2nd Platoon took to a more conventional approach of diving for cover and began trading shots like any common wastelander would, Edward just raised his weapon in the air in one hand.

“One vision!” he yelled through his helmet’s vocalizers, earning some useless shots sent his way.

“One purpose!” the other members of 1st Platoon returned with equal enthusiasm, and they broke into a charge.

With the power armor boosting their strength, it was a small thing to crash into the barricade of furniture and crates and overwhelm the trapped scientists. A few rifle butts roughly kissed stomachs and jaws, and a couple of hands were broken during disarming, but no real damage was done.

As expected of Sev’s gear, nobody’s shields went down below ninety-four percent even after taking several laser barrages at point blank before the melee started.

Once they had the new batch of prisoners restrained, Rebecca, Sylvie and Lynn walked up to the stunned members of 2nd Platoon, and Edward could imagine their smirks.

“Sev’s given us the armor for a reason,” Rebecca drawled. “Might want to work it in your training, we’re all basically walking tanks now.”

Sylvie had a bit more harshness in her comment. “Yeah, we’re supposed to be the cover now. No point for Sev sending us out in all this kit and we’re just hiding away.”

Edward had to agree there, Sev wouldn’t put his people at risk when he had Eversors and Sentinels and Centurions at his disposal. Sending people over was a show of confidence that Sev didn’t think much about the firepower his enemies had. Anyone stupid enough to get themselves wounded after all this protection ought to be humiliated.

The newer Caladan residents would need more time and training to get used to this way of fighting it seems.

The screams and weapons discharges in the background quickly died out, though every now and then Edward would come across a poor fuck being torn apart by Sentinels or Eversors, their delimbed but still-living bodies either carried off or dropping wetly to the ground. The cleansing of the Institute was completed in little over three hours, with no deaths on either side. The amount of severely but not fatally wounded Institute people on the other hand…

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Well, good thing for them Sev’s punishment for the Institute involves them being in one complete piece.

*****

Cait had enough excitement to overcome the disappointment of not joining Sev at the Institute’s invasion. She had been given a mission along with Piper and Nat, this time without Curie to hold their hands. The Zippy Lid sped across the Commonwealth’s skies, heading north towards a place marked as ‘Sanctuary’. It was a deserted suburban area, probably fit for converting into a settlement.

They found what they were looking for, a bit north of the abandoned houses: A vault, just like Sev said it would be. They landed near the main elevator, keeping the Zippy Lid’s stealth on as they disembarked as a matter of habit. The three of them were armored in bespoke Sardaukar power armor and white laser guns, though Cait highly doubted they’d need it if push came to shove.

What were they going to encounter that could beat a nuke going off in your face?

Exiting the Zetan ship, they had a quick scan of the surrounding structures, easily finding the controls to the vault’s elevator and nothing threatening at all. Then again, this wasn’t a culling expedition, so none of the girls were complaining.

“Wonder why Sev doesn’t use this sorta thing,” Nat wondered aloud as they rode the massive elevator down.

Cait couldn’t help snorting. “It looks fancy, sure. But a ramp or Sev’s escalators would move more people faster. Plus, there’s less chance of a lucky hit, you know…” She finished by drawing a line with a finger that arced up and then pointed downwards, whistling as she did so. Nat got the point and nodded.

Once the elevator shuddered to a stop at the underground level, the weapons were out and the three girls left the elevator’s cage gate to see the familiar sight of a sealed vault door, though this one had ‘111’ painted on it.

“So, what’s the bet again?” Cait asked lightly as she walked to the control panel and plugged in her Pip-Boy.

“Ten creds each,” Piper helpfully reminded them. “You said forty seconds, I said fifty-five…”

Nat cut in with an excited exclamation. “And I said fifty!”

They shared smiles before Cait took aim at the vault door. “Right then, let’s see how it goes.” She quickly accessed the vault’s systems and, as Sev liked to say, smashed the button like it was a Like button…whatever that meant.

The underground cavern shook, dirt and pebbles drizzling from the walls as gears and hydraulics unused for centuries came to life. The girls waited with bated breaths, keeping an eye on their Pip-Boys as the massive gear-shaped entrance shuddered, then retracted and rolled away.

“Ah feck.” Cait cursed as the metal bridge fully extended and clanged softly with their platform. She and Piper shared smirks of graceful defeat as Nat whooped triumphantly.

The younger girl did a little dance, pumping her fists in the air. “Woohoo! Let the cake and candies flow!”

The other two indulged her for a few more seconds before a few skittering radroaches were sighted. Cait acted first, drawing up her rifle and sending a few lances of light to superheat and burst each overgrown insect into a puff of ash. The rifle’s charge had been lowered beforehand to reduce collateral damage, but the shots still left sizable holes of blasted concrete and slagged metal.

“Right, time to get back to work girls.”

It wasn’t hard to find what they were looking for, despite the many rooms stuffed with cryo pods. There was a trail of footprints, its path less dust-covered than the rest of the place. A few radroaches were The girls reached their goal in less than thirty minutes of entering the vaults.

Piper went through the monitor and sighed. “Sev was right, no one alive except for the one person, C7…Nora Carter.” Cait noticed the undertone of anger creeping in Piper’s voice as she pored through the terminal. “And again Sev’s right, hers was the only life support that got reactivated after some sort of power outage a few decades ago.”

As the thawing system was reactivated, the girls waited at cryo pod C7 and occasionally gave a glance to the pod opposite it, inhabited by a frozen blood-stained corpse. That was Nora Carter’s husband, and her kid that was supposed to be there as well was missing, just as Sev had said.

Cait didn’t like what Sev revealed to them, especially how fucking callous the head of the Institute could be. No attachments at all to their abandoned mother, not even a thought to free her and take her into the Institute?

Yeah, fuck the Institute and what it really stands for: delusions of grandeur masking casual inhumanity.

The three girls watched as the unfrozen woman groggily stepped out, though her face was still in horrified shock. Cait caught Nora as she stumbled out, and they took the time to let her grieve before escorting her out to the surface. Sev’s middle finger to the Institute’s leader was secured, and as Piper and Nat slowly filled Nora in on some harsh truths, Cait wondered what the Institute would be like by the time she got there.

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