Quoted By:
You can’t see the Vertibird through the smoke or hear it over the firefight, but you know she’s still up there.
*crzk* ROGER, COMING IN HOT *kzrt*
Ulysses has backed up to your position while quickly burning through his remaining ammunition. Instead of normal spore carriers, or really anything you would recognize, the new enemies are just fleshy amalgamations of all shapes and sizes. Some have eight appendages which allow them to skitter along the jungle floor while others are smaller and dart from tree to tree using their sticky, vine-like skin.
You’re not sure how or why but what passes for “natural” in the wasteland is being warped and twisted to unrecognizable levels. You’re not even sure what used to be the freaks you’re putting down with concentrated laser fire.
Your musings help steady your nerves and bring you into perfect combat zen, so much so that you don’t notice the Vertibird drop out of the sky right above your position.
Thick eddies of smoke swirl and dance as the Vertibird’s twin engines help to clear the smoke still streaming from fires all around.
You and Ulysses waste no time clambering up into the cab and before you can get both feet planted, Daisy takes her baby straight up in the air and out of danger. But it’s still not over. Ulysses thunks you on your shoulder paldron.
“Look.”
He’s pointing away from the detonation sight towards a distance in the trees. Something massive is moving through the jungle towards the bomb. You’re not sure how much damage the device can take but you’re not taking any chances. You kneel down and ready the Fat Man.
[Daisy, take us Northwest, towards that disturbance in the trees.]
*szhrk* Your funeral. And mine. *bzlt*
The craft dives again to pick up speed, directly to whatever the hell is big enough to move the jungle like that. You pull the trigger and the first warhead is away. Another warhead is loaded before the first one explodes.
<span class="mu-i">Ding</span>
The first warhead explodes in a mushroom cloud as the other heads directly where you expect the unknown contact to be.
<span class="mu-s">NOOOOOOOOAAAAAUUUUGGGGGGHH</span>
You don’t get the luxury of appreciating the twin mushroom clouds stopping whatever was on the way to the bomb. This internal screech dims the world around you. If you weren’t already kneeling, you might have fallen right out of the Vertibird. Imagine that.
[Ulysses….might be a bad time…I want you to be my second-in-command.]
Your Deputy Director closes his side door and walks over to shut yours as well.
“I’d be honored, Courier Six. With that being said, it may not be wise to send us both on these suicide missions.”
You can help but laugh through the pain, fear and exhaustion.
You look at the clock within your helmet. Any second now…
