Chương 26: Paladin Sara Maxwell (2/2)
Sara grabbed some rubberised gloves, usually reserved for dissecting the Abomination. And found an old wheelchair. Sara and Marks got the still unconscious man to Decontamination. A short concrete tunnel, fitted with hoses and showers. Facing steel rooms with windows down one side.
He sat naked, secured to the wheelchair, in the breeze that flowed through the tunnel. Sara almost felt bad for suggesting this method of interrogation. She'd been through it during sere training and that felt bad enough, even with the knowledge she could quit at any moment. She hadn't.
After forcing half a rad-x down the throat of the unconscious man, she left the cold, open, concrete tunnel. Leaving Marks in the shadows, joining Head Scribe Collins and Elder Maxwell in the steel room.
"He's ready." She said, standing by the glass. The elder flicked the light switch, activating the powerful spot light. Illuminating the unconscious, naked man, strapped tightly to a wheelchair.
"Wake him up." The elder spoke through the two way intercom. Marks began filling buckets with the yet to be purified, irradiated, dirty run off water. The deliberately placed Geiger counter spitting out clicks at an increasing rate.
From the shadows he hurled the cold water onto the naked man, waking him with a start. The man yelled and winced, straining against the straps to block the bright light from his eyes, to no avail.
"Where am I?" The man slowed his panicked breathing long enough to ask a question, his first mistake. The elder flicked the light off, plunging the man into darkness. Cueing Marks to hit him with more cold, irradiated water.
More thrashing, more yelling. And an unexpected boon to the ancient interrogation technique mixed with a cruel wasteland twist. The device on the man's arm had a Geiger counter built in, meaning double the unnerving clicking.
"Name?" The elder spoke through the intercom, amplifying the gravel in his voice.
"What?" No one ever answered the first question. Lights out, water thrown, both Geiger's spitting out clicks. The man tried to slow his breathing, only for the sound of water filling up a bucket to echo in the darkness. Sara remembered how it felt, yet she knew there would be no lasting damage, not physically anyway.
"What is your name?" The elder spoke clearly, the interrogation subject, suitably softened up, answered.
"J...J…John."
"Why did you have one of our beacons John?"
"I…I tried to help him, these…things had them." Sara knew how close he'd gotten to the Abomination. Close enough to knock one down. Closer than most who lived to tell about it. She admired him for it.
"I tried to help him, but he wanted his pack, he gave me the beacon and told me to run, then he threw a grenade at them. Please, I tried to help him, why ar—" Question. Flick, splash, yelling, clicks.
"Why didn't Michaels try to escape?" Sara asked her father as the man strapped to a chair, in darkness, breathed heavily and shivered.
"Because he knew how important the device is." Her father's answer worried her.
Sara didn't think there could be anything more valuable than the lives of their Brothers. Even if this guy turned out to be everything her father thought he might be.
His zeal for the cause, his determination to succeed at a mission he fought to get, had worn her father down. Here, now, before him sat the only real lead in five years. Sara didn't like what it started to bring out in him. He flicked the light back on, continuing the interrogation.
"Why were you in the City? You raiding our supply lines?" With a surprisingly aggressive response for someone naked, soaking wet and strapped to a chair, the man answered.
"Do I look like a fucking raider to you?" Question, and no matter how much it made Sara smile, it got answered in the same way. Darkness, cold water, pain. The light came back on quickly and the man answered without being asked. It wouldn't be long before he broke.
"I was looking for radio equipment." He gave more detail than he needed to. The elder knew what to ask next.
"Tell me about the Vault." The man slumped in the chair, his head hung in confused defeat as he spoke.
"We need parts for an air recirc system. If, when, it breaks people are going to die." That hadn't been the answer they expected.
"Then why were you looking for radio equipment?"
"No one I spoke to had any idea where to find what I needed, but they said there were other Vaults…" The man stopped talking, offering one last act of defiance. Not a question, but the elder flicked the light off all the same. Marks had the good sense to hold back the water, just long enough. "Ok, Ok." He'd broke. The mere thought of another short, sharp blast of cold, irradiated water was enough to compel compliance. Sara had seen seasoned knights break faster than this.
The light came back on, offering the curated sense of safety. "My pipboy, on my arm, it has a mapping function. With the radio equipment I can boost the signal, scan a larger area, try to find another Vault."
"So everyone in this Vault is in danger, and they send you in your shiny blue suit?" The elder asked quickly.
"They didn't send me, they wouldn't even listen to me, I escaped." The more this guy said the more Sara liked him. He had grit, even broken and shivering.
"How did you open the door?" The answer to the elder's question could change everything.
"My pipboy." The elder sat down, a look long absent from his face returning, a look of purpose.
"Collins, have a room prepared. Strip it bare, nothing identifiable, nothing. Have someone clear the tower meeting room too."
"Elder, may I suggest we pump in white noise through the base pa system, enough to cancel out any mapping signals?" Sara didn't like Collins, he didn't like anyone that wasn't long dead, but he was smart.
"Yes, good, do it, then meet us in my office. Sara, put him through de-con, gently. Let him rest, put two knights outside the door, under order not to speak to him, then come to my office." It'd been a good while since she'd seen the elder so focused, yet it bothered Sara more than it comforted her.
Sara took the remaining half of the pre-emptive anti rad medication out of an abundance of caution more than concern. She approached the shivering, frightened, broken and confused man strapped to a wheelchair.
Getting a sense of the elder's plan, and unable to deny her own pangs of guilt for the brutal reward the man's bravery earned him, she spoke softly. "John, it's ok, it's over now." She turned him from the light, undid the straps, and let the naked man take a minute.
"We gave you anti-rads, but we still need to put you through decontamination." She crouched to be on the same level, keeping a soft tone. "The water's hot and once we're done you can rest. Do you think you can walk?" She highly doubted the muscular man had lost the ability to walk.
Her training and experience told her to be passive. Asking not telling, using his name, saying we instead of you or I. As much a part of the interrogation as the light.
Shambling, stumbling, the naked man made it to the short distance to the showers. Sara controlled the temperature, slowly warming the water to prevent shock. She used the long handled brushes as gently as she could to scrub the contamination away. He was in too fragile a state, wincing, yelping with every swipe. She hoped he never got a real rad exposure, they would practically take your skin off with these brushes.
She let him stay as long as he wanted in the warm shower. He didn't seem embarrassed. It was too late for that anyway, even though from where Sara stood he had nothing to be embarrassed about. There were knights who spent every waking minute in power armour or lifting weights that didn't have the definition he did.
She handed him a soft towel that somehow still seemed to pain the man as he dried and wrapped it around his waist. She led him to the nearby quarters. A stripped out room with a heavy door, barely big enough for the simple metal bed.
"I know it's small, but it's just for tonight, we'll talk in the morning." She thought it unfit for her. The man seemed too tired to care, he all but collapsed onto the bed.
"What time? In the morning I mean." He asked.
"O'six hundred." Sara answered, a little confused with such a practical question. "I'll bring you breakfast, how 'bout that." She watched as he quickly tapped away on the strange device, realising he set an alarm. Amused at the benign function of the most advanced piece of technology she'd ever seen.
She crouched again, failing to make eye contact, but succeeding at creating the illusion of equality. "I'm going to have to lock this door, but someone will be out here all night." She tried to sound non-threatening. "You just knock and they'll get me, ok." She'd have said that even if it wasn't part of building trust from an interrogation subject. She started to leave, deliberately slowing in case he said something, he did.
"I tried to help him, I couldn't help the woman, but I tried to help him." He wasn't lying, she knew that.
"We know John, you did real good. We can bring them home now, because of you." Sara wanted to tell him he was safe, but couldn't. She hated that feeling.
Sheer exhaustion granted the man the release of sleep before she even left the room. She closed the steel door and bolted it quietly. As she waited to be relieved by the overnight guards Sara still couldn't tell if she made the right decision. But she knew dumping his body out there would have been wrong.
Sara entered the elder's office, adjacent to her father's quarters. Finding the big three sat in silence on the pre-war, fake leather seating that almost looked new. The look in his eye told her the elder made them wait, they must have hated that.
She sat on the same side as Marks, his Recon stench more present in the sub level room, and poured herself a triple vodka rocks. Like her father and Marks. Alcohol far too low brow for Collins. She drank half of it, saying a silent toast in memory of friend Alice.
Sara now present, the elder began the meeting. "The Abomination has been purged, our people have been brought home. The service will be at twenty hundred hours." Marks finished his drink and poured another. The loss of three would be felt by the three hundred or so Brothers. The loss from the elite ranks of Recon would cut deep.
"I take it I don't need to state anything said here stays here." The elder did anyway, trying to make it sound like it wasn't an order to stay quiet. "But as for our guest..." He trailed off. Partly not to tint the responses from his officers, partly to gauge loyalty. See who would be closest to the idea he clearly already had.
"The technology has to be from Vault X." Collins was the first one to say it out loud. Invoking the name of the pre-war intel so old it qualified as legend. "Everything we know says it was bleeding edge, experimental prototypes, its own advanced little bubble of tech. The bioengineering alone could revolutionise the Brotherhood."
Collins readied his proposal. "Elder Maxwell, further study must be undertaken. Perhaps light sedation, maybe a bone sample, Maxon himself." The elder rejected the same idea he had previously with a raised hand. Too tired of the one dimensional thinking of the scribe, and the wrong person to raise scripture to.
"We can push him harder. Get Tick in his R frame, let him handle it. Even if that thing on his arm goes critical, Tick's the best runner I've got." The Recon frames, power armour without the armour, did grant the wearer greater speed and enhanced agility. However Sara highly doubted one could outrun a nuclear blast, not even with Tick wearing it. Sara hid a smile as the head scribe's irritating obsession with rank actually paid off for once.
"I will not allow you to risk the device, Lead Scout Marks." Collins sneered.
Sara reached her limit for the same ideas from an hour ago. Judging by the look on his face and his second top up, so had the elder. Her father gave her a look to weigh in, she did.
"Most of what little evidence we have of Vault X tells us it was short term, years, not decades. A premade, buried beachhead to launch a guerrilla campaign against an occupying force. So you're trying to tell me an advanced battalion stays buried for almost a century, then sends one guy in a shiny blue suit out into the wastes. Without so much as a warm coat? No."
"He was armed, he may have lost his gear." Collins replied. Once again Sara had little patience for the man who never left the outpost.
"He didn't lose his gear, what little he had was strapped tight. Now consider the alternative. If he's telling the truth, and I think he is, there's people in a Vault out there at risk of suffocating. Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't we supposed to protect people from harmful technology?" She looked her father in the eye, hoping to reach the elder as well.
"If it's lasted this long, there could be hundreds, thousands down there, kids too." She finished her drink, placing the fine, cut glass, tumbler on the steel table slowly. "He has a key to a door we can't find. He stood his ground against two greenskins, was ready to go at one with nothing more than a hammer and a knife." She'd been saving that little detail for just the right moment, knowing the elder would respect it.
"Recruit him." She waited for the elder to object, he didn't, not yet anyway. "We can assess him, build trust. Maybe in the process save some lives and help the Brotherhood at the same time." She waited, knowing this was the smart move. The right move. If she thought that, the man who saved an orphan, raised her, trained her, had to be thinking the same thing. He was.
"Very well, I'll talk to him in the morning, but Sara, you watch him, you watch him like a hawk." She smiled and winked at her father, then stood to attention to salute the elder. "Thank you Elder Maxwell. Will there be anything else sir?"
"No, dismissed paladin."
Sara hurried back to her quarters, stopping by the mess just long enough to snag a couple of blood oranges. She left without joining the mourners, she wasn't ready yet, and there'd be chance at the service.
She entered her cosy quarters and showered in her private bathroom. A benefit of her hard earned rank. Then sat at her desk, surrounded by the pre-war books, knickknacks, holo's. All acquired by spending more time here than anywhere she'd served before. And an elder who understood the value to morale local trade could bring.
She ate half a blood orange and juiced the other. The sweet, red liquid mixed with vodka, another infrequent bright spot of being here. She wrote a shopping list to get items from the nearest town, in black ink. Nothing uncommon.
With a heavy heart, she blended the remnants of the juice with just the right amount of alcohol to create an invisible ink. Like her uncle taught her before he left, before he was cast out.
She wrote her secret message with the razor sharp tip of her stiletto knife, let it dry, and folded it up. Not even sealing it, to keep its appearance utterly dull. Knowing the enigmatic at best, couriers they used would get it to the right trader, who would get it to her uncle.
He had to be told, he had a right to be told. He'd put years into this mission too, plus it already cost him friends, and ten good years of marriage.
Sara had been in her teens when her father married him. In secret to appease high command. They didn't care what grunts did, but one of their own who wasn't a 'family man' didn't sit right with the petty pre-war minds of third generation elders.
The rationalising didn't help Sara fall asleep. She kept thinking about two chains. The chain of events she'd set in motion. And the sacred law of the Brotherhood. The chain that binds. The law that says orders were to be obeyed. Without question, hesitation or deviation. The chain that the secret message on her desk broke.
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