Bab 53: Fallout Luna by AXSL
I heard post nuclear war Moon is pretty nice Place to be this time of the year don't you think so too?
Words: 150k+
Link: https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/fallout-luna.1054842/
(Post-apocalyptic Fallout quest set on the Moon! We are an american astronaut trapped there after the Great War happened on Earth. What will we do? Try to go back to Earth and settle there? Try our luck among the stars? Perhaps try turning the Moon into a place worthy of living in? We will see!)
War, war never changes, and neither does the great cosmos.
Space. So beautiful, so alien, so deadly.
You looked upwards and saw Earth floating among the void. Today was your first day on the Moon. You were always dreaming of becoming an astronaut and exploring the ultimate frontier, but unfortunately despite your best efforts you didn't make the cut, but all that changed a couple of months later. One of the people working in one of the many American moon bases unexpectedly died due to a sudden heart attack, the people in that base were already short staffed, and they couldn't work with even less personnel, so in a quick and hasty and somewhat unorthodox manner you were chosen to replace the unlucky devil. On October 15, 2077 you entered into an unmanned rocket and traveled cramped among tons and tons of cargo and the sole company of hundreds of cages full of laboratory grade rats. Despite the clear discomfort of your days long journey you headed into the skies and never looked back. Your arrival wasn't the most warm one, apparently the person who died was pretty well liked around here, and hence the rest of the soldiers, engineers, workers and scientists of the moon base disliked the idea of a "reject" like you taking its place. Still, they were professional enough and showed you around and gave you a set of instructions and duties.
Once your brief tour around the base was over you were given a spacesuit, the keys to one of the moon buggies and to get you better used to the lower gravity your higher ups decided to send you and drive a couple of laps around the base. You of course had prior weeks of training beforehand, but there's only so much you can do in Virtual Reality pods.
As you drove around the base the radio transmitter inside of your spacesuit suddenly cracked to life. "Newbie." a distorted voice spoke. "We are detecting a strange signal five clicks outside of your actual location. You are the closest person, go and check it out. If it's a commie data collector, run over it and kick it down for us. The god-damn chinks build those things everywhere."
"Data collector?" You asked, as the coordinates appeared on the screen of your buggy.
"Eeeyup. Small antennas that the Chinese scatter pretty much everywhere. They tell us that they are scientific instruments used to gather rock samples, cosmic radiation and all of that crap, but we believe that they are spy devices used to tap on our radio communications. So we simply destroy every one that we see."
"What's the situation here with China and the rest of the nations? Most people back on Earth are pretty in the dark about what's going on up here."
"We left the american flag in 1969 you should already know that, but that didn't mean that the moon belonged to us. Manifest destiny doesn't apply here. 'Merica, China, Russia, and several conglomerates of countries from Europe, Asia and Latam have all built moon bases. Some of them are entirely operated by robots, cause sending a man to space is far more expensive than sending a bot. The United Nations signed a decree saying that no country could build military buildings on the Moon, so most bases here simply drill Helium-3 from the underground and send it back to Earth, a few do scientific research, or at least that's what they officially do, we know that some of them are instead bunkers with underground silos full of nuclear missiles."
"Oh shit, and there's nothing we can do?"
"The moon is technically no-man's land. We are engaging in a shadow war in here, constantly sabotaging each other's crap, there have been a few battles in the Sea of Tranquility as well, but right now we don't physically attack each other, because tensions are too high and any attack could lead to our respective nations on Earth launching the nukes. Just break that shit and call it a day will you? We still have plenty to teach you."
You nodded and drove towards the strange metallic device. It was painted white to better camouflage it against the moon's naturally white wasteland, but still its spinning components and blinking lights along with shiny studs and bolts and chinese characters written in faint red clearly gave it away. It was small, the size of a cat more or less.
With a couple of punts and kicks the device began to break until it started to emit smoke, sparks, and finally caught on fire. Its lights died, its moving components froze, and the signal that was on your screen disappeared. As you were about to drive back to the base the ground suddenly shook.
"A moonquake!?" You asked yourself, not even checking if you were in any open radio channel.
"Newbie! Come back to the base! Right now!"
Another moonquake, suddenly in the sky a bright flash of light, you looked towards Earth and saw it set on fire, hundreds of explosions dotting its surface, each second new ones happening all across the world. In the distance several silos hidden among the lunar surface opened and from them nuclear missiles flew away towards Earth.
"Fuck!" With shakey hands you turned on the engines and pressed the pedal to the metal and drove as fast as you could. The electric engines of the moon buggy began to spew sparks and glow with intensity but even then, there's so much they could do, these vehicles weren't designed with speed in mind.
As you got closer to the base several specially adapted tanks, combat robots and power-armored soldiers began to come out of it, in the far distance the Chinese and Russian moon bases did the same, soon enough the moon would also follow Earth's example and become a war ravaged hellscape.
After entering the base you witnessed the few remaining troops rallying and preparing the rest of the workers to enter into cryo-stasis pods. You too were assigned a pod and after quickly removing your space-suit you got inside.
Nobody said anything, but you all knew that this was it, that nothing would ever be the same. There was no certainty that any of you would ever be reawakened, and if you ever did, it would be to a moon that had been either liberated, or conquered by the enemy. Your chances of getting a happy ending were slim to none, but you were ironically grateful for being on the moon and not on Earth, where the nukes had been falling nonstop. If your destiny was to be asleep until the end of time, so be it, there are worse fates.
And you were proven right...
From the radios on the base and on your suit you could hear the soldiers out there screaming and firing nonstop, the battle was way closer than you expected. As your pod was about to close and freeze you to near-death an explosion shook the entire moon base. Parts of its ceiling began to crack and fall down, several of the pods were crushed, its occupants instantly killed, yours was merely damaged.
Several cracks formed on the pod's glass. The lights inside turned red.
"ALERT. ALERT." Suddenly a small speaker inside of the pod blared. "BREACH DETECTED. RADIATION SHIELDS AT 76%. ENERGY CELLS DAMAGED. EFFICIENCY AT 56%. PROCEEDING WITH CRYO-FREEZING."
"What! Fuck no! Let me find another pod!" You screamed as you tried to pry open the hermetically sealed door. The cold got into you fast, and then the next centuries became a blurry nightmare.
To save on power and recharge its batteries the pod awakened you every now and then, sometimes several times the same year, sometimes decades passed between each awakening. Each awakening lasted a random amount of time, it could be only a couple of hours, sometimes it was up to 48 hours. During that time you were incredibly cold, but also burning on the inside. The damaged cryo-pod and breached base weren't able to fully stop the cosmic radiation of the moon so you witnessed your skin flaking off your hands, your hair falling off, teeth becoming loose. The hunger got into you, the machine injected you with nutrients to keep you alive, but they didn't stave off hunger, desperate over the span of several decades you ended up eating your own uniform. Every time that you woke up you wished and prayed that it was the last, but it seemed as if your end never truly came.
Until… one day, it opened.
You were so weak that you immediately fell onto the ground. Your limbs burned as they were forced to move for the first time in ages, your bones and joints cracked painfully. Wheezing and coughing you managed to stand up, most of the base continued in lockdown but thankfully there was a nearby bathroom, pushing yourself to the extreme you somehow managed to drag yourself inside, you tried the faucets and almost cried when you saw them not working, but then you noticed that several of the toilets still had water in them. Leaving the small decency and civility left in your soul you threw yourself onto the toilet bowl and began to drink until you had your fill. You missed food so much, but you missed water even more. Now that you were sated you rested and cried to your heart's content and finally when you were somewhat calmer you painfully stood up and somewhat afraid headed into a nearby mirror. When you looked at yourself in the reflective mirror, the creature, not the person, the creature on the other side horrified you.
"W-what am I?"
Your memory was foggy. Being in a constant flux of forced freezing and awakening erased most of your identity. You could barely remember your name, you could barely remember who you were.
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