When I finally woke it was to Radars long distance sensor alarm. Something was pinging his sensors at their very edge and he had responded by waking me with a near heart attack. I ran to the roof with my rifle ready and took aim in the direction he was pinging. Inbetween two distant hills, past a small thicket of trees, was a small brown form moving slowly towards my area. All I could see was a small brown blob of movement.
Relaxing I sat back and looked at Radar. "Stay on alert. If it gets close enough to visually identify then alert me. It's way to far to do anything about right now." Following my orders Radar floated up and kept scanning the area while keeping track of the distant creature. I left to have breakfast and checked the bots before mapping a route deeper into deathclaw territory. I mapped multiple routes before packing up the gear I'd taken out before sleeping. As I was throwing my stuff into the truck a bot pinged a threat and lasers began going off. As I circled the building to identify the enemy the ground below me exploded. Claws raked against my shin as teeth attempted to sink into my steel toe boots. My hand flicked down and the mole rats head vanished in a cloud of blood vapor and ash. I leapt to the side of the building and clambered onto a large windowsill as more mole rats popped up. Around a corner a small group came, all chased by my bots. Radars heavier weapons rained down as I blasted away at the ground. After a minute of shooting I finally stopped with multiple piles of ashes covering the torn up dirt. "Radar give me a report." I spoke.
A line of Morse code later and a quick translation from my pipboy gave me an update. The small beasts had ambushed a bit and taken it down before it could detonate. The rest had survived with to burn the attackers. The unknown creature was near visible range and I needed to get to the roof to check it out. The bots went back to patrol and I made my way up.
The second I saw the creature I ordered high alert for my bots. I could easily tell that the creature was an adult deathclaw. It was hovering just outside my rifle's guaranteed killing range so I ordered the bots with arms to pile up the remaining molerat bodies and start slowly burning them. A few minutes passed as I watched the creature before I saw it stand. It was barely visible but I could see it get higher and thinner before its head shook a bit. I could imagine the smelling animation from one of the games. It fell back to the ground before its previous speed increased dramatically. It wasn't running but its gate was rapidly increasing its size.
I stayed on sight till I could finally see the beast properly. It slowed down as it got closer and a small glint flashed from its head. My stomach dropped as I saw that and I sat back a bit. An order sent all the bots to the side of the building with the deathclaw befor I took aim. It's silver domed head dropped in an instant as my bullet passed through with little resistance. My bots quickly swarmed back to my truck as I ran down the buildings steps two at a time.
Radar was pinging movement on his scanners from all around as I started the truck. My bots loaded up as one stayed behind as a distraction. I slammed the truck into drive and put the pedal to the floor. My rifle clattered around as I hit the road and tore away from the town. I immediately felt to slow as Radars pings got translated into the readable info. Movement matching the deathclaw circles the town before closing in and the signal from the distraction bot blinked out.
A terrifying clam settled on my mind as radars pings indicated the enemy giving chase and closing fast. Another bot launched from the truck mount it had settled in and flew back to meet and distract my hunters. Uncaring for the loss of another bot or any damage I was doing to my truck, I did my best to drive full speed back towards Laramie. Ten minutes passed as I shot down the crumbling road as fast as my truck could go while dodging the numerous potholes from hundreds of years of neglect. After the ten minutes passed Radars pinging died down and I came to a stop.
My bots deployed and kept a close vigil as Radar flew overhead and back to scan more. A few distant scans showed my pursuers pulling away. The unnatural calm I had gained vanished as I started rolling again. Radar flew low, just high enough to take effective long distance scans. Time passed as I slowly made my way back to human territory. It was 1 o'clock when I pulled into Laramie and nearly morning when I finally went to bed.
It was well past midday when I awoke and I immediately got to work on my newest project. I needed to verify what I'd seen and I'd need the tech to give me a sense of safety while investigating. My bike shop, run by the old mayor was doing well and I had plenty of money to afford the tech I needed. To begin my project I made a small four wheeler style vehicle with a rounded shell. I fitted the quietest and most reliable electric engine I could make to it and shoved all the stealth tech I could into it.
Once my tech order began to be filled I started work on the shell. Inside was a VR setup like memory loungers and such but made to show the outside world in high definition. The outside was covered in stealth-boy invisibility field emitters. Finally for the last improvement, on the last day before my planned outing I strapped four, overpowered eyebot boosters.
With them my invisible car could effectively jump most potholes or other obstacles and avoid the major pains that had slowed me down. Inside I had my rifle, a blaster, a laser pistol, and plenty of smaller guns. Five frag mines and a bag of grenades backed up my armaments with an explosive punch. Finally I put on my stealth suit and left the town. Radar now had a stealth system and sat high in the sky, an invisible eye watching over me as I made my way back into deathclaw territory.
My nerves were on end as I flinched at every ping from Radar. Finally I passed through the small town of stayed in. There were no signs of what had happened, not a scrap from my bots or drop of blood from a deathclaw. Not even the ash of the burned molerats remained. The only sign that this place had been touched was Radars scanner picking up an armed plasma mine hidden under debris at the school buildings entrance.
I ignored it and passed through and after a few hours stopped at a town called Cody. It was decently close to Montana and Yellowstone. A focus around a large cannery made the town seem small despite its size compared to most places in the wasteland. This place was technically deathclaw territory but was well amped by the nearby lancers. It was however not deathclaw or human controlled. The makeshift scrap walls and steel spikes gave away what controlled the area. If that wasn't enough the bags of gore and mounted heads of all types leant even more evidence towards my guess. Finally I got close enough to distinguish the supermutants wandering the streets and patrolling the walls. It was clear they were constantly in guard from the deathclaws.
After observing them for a bit I turned around and went back to the destroyed town I'd passed through and ignored. From there I took a side road up to the town of Emblem. From there I went to Sheridan and spent the night on its outskirts. In the city Radar finally picked up a deathclaw and we tracked it slowly. A few hours of stalking it took us near the old airport of the city. It was there that I finally confirmed my suspicions. The deathclaws entered the airport with a few others and they disappeared into the main building. Out came more all looking fresh and ready to patrol. All of them had a silver dome and followed an easy to track patrol pattern. Using the pattern I went closer and Radar blasted the building with scans. I targeted the building with my own GPR and its data was sent to my pipboy. My pipboy, being the miraculous tool it was, took the data and constructed a map for five layers of an underground bunker. The second our scans finished I drove to the edge of town to look over the data from the scans.
Combining the data from Radar and my scanner took a few hours but I finally got a layout of the complex. The very clearly enclave base was doing some kind of research on the very bottom floor with the upper four being support or deathclaw control. The most concerning of the things I could see on the slightly generated 3d map was what looked like one of my motor bikes.
The place was swarming with scientists below the first floor and many were at my bike as it seemed to be suspended on chains. As the 3d map continued to generate I found a place to park and went to sleep with Radar on alert. When morning came I drove to the airport and left my invisible car parked outside with most of my stuff inside. My blaster and pistols along with a few grenades came along as my invisible form walked inside.
I walked right in, to an elevator door that would have lead to the multiple floors of the airports main building. At the door I tentatively pressed a button and the doors surprisingly opened. I entered and pressed the button for the top floor. A red light flashed on the button so I tried the others. They all flashed red till I hit the assistance button. A small dark screen above the buttons lit up with blue waveforms and a speaker crackled to life. "God Bless America!"
The words cracked out and slightly startled me. The waveforms on the screen died and I immediately reached for an answer. It was obviously wanting an answer to identify the person that had entered. A click deactivated my silence module in my helmet and I spoke "God Bless the Enclave."
The waveform flickered to match my words before a small ding sounded and the elevator doors closed. I clicked the silencer on and hugged the wall incase someone was watching the door. I didn't know how far I went but the doors eventually opened to a large room full of scientists. I peaked out to find the room was brightly lit with lots of sciency stuff all around. Tables littered with tech, large green tubes with mutant abominations, robots here or there, and a large Tesla cannon mounted on two robotic arms at a table. A few of the scientists were pointing plasma or laser weapons at the elevator as others attempted to contain the centerpiece of the room. A steel platform with massive, thick bars running from floor to ceiling. Chains wrapping the massive beast inside. A bloody mechanical maw chewed at a body it had caught in the panic of me coming down here. Two cybernetic arms waved around, attempting to blast plasma emitters at the scientists outside the cage.
I stepped out of the elevator as it began to close. In an instant the room was flooded by security and I took my ill advised plans into action. I swiped a plasma cutter from the closest table and went past everyone to the bars. My stealth field barely hid the damage I was doing in the chaos of the massive cyber deathclaws freakout. With the help of security it was finally restrained and the scientists began to relax as the guards investigated the elevator. That was when I tossed my grenades and began cutting the bars some more.
When the plasma cutter finally ran out I had most of the bars cut in multiple places and what looked like an injection of psycho in my hand. I pulled one of my med-x from my pockets and injected both drugs into the massive monster. Right before it 'woke' I slapped the safety's off on the plasma emitters of the cyber arms and ran for the nearest door. I knew this door led to the four floor and the sever room of the base. As deadly chaos erupted I sprinted away. I slammed to a stop in the server room and plugged my pipboy into the servers control computer and bypassed its defenses. The weak defenses were a sign of this bases main protection being the deathclaws and its hidden placement.
I quickly looked through everything I could and downloaded what looked important or interesting. After taking all of it I uploaded a virus and dashed for the first floor. It had the security room and the base commanders room. The third and second floors were both interesting but I had limited time so I skipped them for the main prizes. The first look now only had three people, one at the main human entrance, one at the top of the stairs I was now climbing, and the commander in his room, trying to direct his men into bringing back order.
I silent 22 round took out the stair guard and I slipped past the commanders room to get the entrance guard. I then went to the commanders room and put a round in his head. I took what I could from him and his terminal before melting a hole through a safes door to open it. Inside was a plasma defender, plasma grenade, plasma ammo, lots of papers and a few holotapes, and finally, at the back of the safe, four bottles of nuka-cola quantum, and a bottle of
nuka-cola dark.
I snatched all my slightly ill-gotten gains and went directly for the security armory. The door was locked but the commander had a master key to the entire facility so I popped it open and slipped in. Inside was a small treasury. My toes nearly curled at not being able to take all of this for myself. Multiple suits of X01, piles of scout armor, racks of plasma weapons including multiple Gauss rifles, two deactivated assaultrons, a deactivated sentry bot, and five deactivated eyebots.
One corner was stacked with ammo cans and three full size ammo storage boxes. In the very back was a table covered in medkits and chem boxes. I went straight for the guns. Three holsters with plasma defenders joined my hips and my back. A small plasma rifle slung over my shoulder next to my blaster. A belt of plasma and pulse grenades went in next. Two plasma cutters got tied to my belt with a plasma caster hooked on the sma wand moved to my back. Finally a Gauss rifle in one hand and a stack of plasma mines at the door with the one in my hand activated. I'd taken everything I could reasonably carry and yet I still loathed to annihilate all of this. The brief and idiotic thought of killing the rest of the enclave members flashed through me but I squashed it as best I could. I set the mine and ran for the main man door while unlocking and activating the deathclaws entrance. It wouldn't do much but I could still hope that the monsters killed at least one enclave member.
I slipped out the man door as the deathclaws slunk inside and quickly tore into the single corpse of the only guard in the room. My trip back to my invisible car was slow but I made it back with plenty of time as Radar kept me updated on what could be seen with sensors underground. My drive back to town was only interrupted once as a massive explosion bloomed in the sky with a thick cloud of smoke pouring away.
I was sure that anyone within a few miles would notice and the enclave would certainly find out what had happened to that base. In my way out of the territory Radar only detected a single deathclaw.