FALLOUT: Sievert - Vol.2: Threshold

Chapter 11 - Threshold

One month has passed with nothing to do. I've finished most of my books, polished my armor, and took up odd jobs in the base. I got in a fight in the cafeteria; there was no winner. The base commander broke us up right when Claire jumped in to help me. After the fight, the combative Sergeant and I were confined to our rooms for two days as punishment. Even though he started it by taking my jerky stick from my lunch tray.

While confined, I started a new section on the book on 'Appeals, Fatigues, and Armor'. I read nearly the rest of the book in that time. Out of boredom, I put on my T-51 trying to see if there was anything else I needed to figure out and get used to it anyway. More of nothing to do, I went to bed early. I was getting much more comfortable on my side now that my arm wasn't hurting too much.

I awoke to an alarm going off, followed by a loudspeaker in the halls in a robotic word-by-word tone. "Alpha. And. Charlie. To the. Hangar bay. Bravo. To The. Helicopter pad."

I got up, quickly put on some spandex, and then slipped into a military fatigue top and pants before throwing on my combat armor. I holstered my 10mm Colt handgun; slipping extra rounds into the belt holsters as I didn't have a new rifle yet. Looking around, I needed my armband. Sifting over a box of ammo, my medal, a few holodisks, armor tools, and then finally find it at the bottom of my locker. I pinned it on my combat fatigue upper sleeve and ran out the door with helmet in hand. At the same time, Claire came out of her room in the same combat armor carrying. She held her helmet to her side, following her example, I did the same thing.

"Hey, Lyn!" She said running up to me, walking alongside me.

"Where is your rifle?" She asked.

I responded with a bit of a monotone voice "lost it at the big battle a while ago."

"Oh. That sucks, you'll get something better sooner or-" she stopped, then changes the subject.

"Hey what's that!?" She said in a slightly higher tone of voice and exclamation while pointing to the opposite direction i was looking at and away from her.

As I turned my head away from Claire, she ripped my W.O. Insignia patch off the Velcro from my shoulder and ran ahead.

"Hey, No! Claire, give that back!" I demanded in a hastily kind of tone while looking at her with a frown.

"Don't only officers get these? Are you an Officer now!? How!?" She asked in heighten interest.

I looked at her normally with a gentle sigh, "I don't know. When I looked it up, it said that was a Warrant Officer. It's a sub-class of Officer that's suppose to specialize in Intel, military police, and-" I was cut off by Claire.

"Military Police!? So I can be a Warrant Officer at some point!?" she asked while smiling back at me with her ears sticking up.

We were now walking side by side again, up the stairs. "Uh, yea. I guess you could be. What are you now?" I asked as I couldn't see her left shoulder.

"I'm, uhhh. That thing with 3 stripes pointing up and the one curved stripe under it." she said as she thumbed the lace and fabric of my W.O. patch.

I responded with a guess. "I think that was the Staff Sergeant? I might be wrong, but that means you do have superiority over everyone under you. And no idea if Warrant Officers are actually officers or enlisted, as it's like... a sub or in-between rank? I thiiink?" Claire slapped the patch back on my shoulder.

We finally reach the hanger, other units were standing around our team's boarding point; most in combat armor, two women in only fatigues, no armor, talking to each other as they stood by cargo containers. Two in T-45 power armor, one loading things into the A.P.C., the other standing around in a group of four others in combat armor having a group conversation. Then two others in combat armor doing checks on the A.P.C. and its cargo.