Fallout: Fury Blood

Chapter 59: Nightfall

By the flick of his hand, Danse's platoon moved up in tandem, hemming the motley band of raiders into a dead-end of building debris. There was nowhere to run now.

"Light 'em up!"

An array of firepower converged by his command, ripping into their bodies with merciless violence, creating a space of gore and metal for some lone scavenger to wonder upon long after the crew had moved on.

Danse nodded in grim satisfaction, and his crew emerged from the cover of night to inspect their work, weapons steaming by the barrels. The raiders never stood a chance.

"Take what we need and move out." Danse turned away from the scene while the others looted, peering into the crowding dark of the city ruins. They were behind schedule. Progress had been hindered by endless encounters of city crawlers, from raiders to Gunners to mutants. Moving a platoon unseen through the hazards of the city was a difficult task, even in the darkness. And several members of the group were not so versed in the art of stealth. Like that damned super mutant...

If only he still had his power armor, he could patrol the Wastes behind the smokescreen of steel, ghost the roads, vanquish all in his way. But his armor was lost, just like his life. How was he to follow Kelly to war without his armor-his identity? How was he to follow her under some mute, faceless pretence? Someone along the way would eventually request his identity.

It didn't matter. As long as he was at her side. He could make up the rest as he went.

But spontaneity wasn't his strong suit...

Something stirred the air. Danse peered ahead, his eye a keen surveyor. But it wasn't his eye that detected movement. It was his ears.

A thick droning reverberated through the night winds, wrapping itself around the skyscrapers and into his eardrums. Danse frowned, pushing his hood back to clear his ears for a better chance at identifying the sound.

"No..."

Panic took up a siege in his mind, purging all traces of his sanity as he stepped forward into the clearing of the street. "No, no, no, no, no..."

"Crew-cut?" Hancock grated from behind, but it was muted for the growing rumble in the air that spelled failure to Danse.

With rifle in arm, he sprinted down the street to get a clear view of the sky from around the skyscrapers, ignoring the hushed calls from the others. The deep rumbling was interspersed with the rotors of vertibirds.

"No, no, no, no..."

The Brotherhood of Steel's fleet took to the stars as they burst out from behind the city ruins, unrolling in squadrons that shook the fibres of the night. Danse didn't have the sense to stop short in his sprint and hide from sight. He didn't care about his discovery. He stared up at the fleet of steel angels in a combination of awe and horror.

Then he saw it. The Prydwen. Rolling with the dark, growling through the night, stretching out it's mighty mass for war. It arced for the Glowing Sea and the red hell beyond, vertibirds flanking it's pilgrimage. The city quaked under it's wrath, the very air seeming to shift apart in it's passage.

"Kelly..."

He felt the presence of the others as they raced up behind him, Nick and Hancock on his shoulders, but he was barely aware. All he could think of was her, alone in that godforsaken land, balancing her burdens without a sole for support, drowning in blood and fire, surrounded by ash and bone.