Fallout - Chapter 148: The Egg and the Storm (Patreon)

Across the wasteland of Nuka-World, a fiery steel steed was galloping.

Josie rode Arsie, the stealth reconnaissance hoverbike that had returned to her less than twenty-four hours ago. Its hover engine emitted a low hum as its jet thrusters whipped up a cloud of yellowish-brown dust behind her. The wind sliced past the sides of her visor with a piercing howl. She crouched low, her chin nearly touching the handlebars, her eyes locked on the figure ahead racing for his life.

A Pack raider.

His antler helmet had slipped askew as he ran; his armor, stitched from animal hides, was soaked through with sweat and mud; his legs stumbled and staggered over the gravel, on the verge of collapse at any moment.

But he didn’t stop. He didn’t dare.

Josie gripped the handlebars with one hand while drawing the pistol from her waist with the other; she aimed and pulled the trigger.

The gunshot rang out across the open wilderness, short and sharp.

A spray of blood bloomed on the raider’s nape. The antler helmet flew off, somersaulted twice in the air, and landed on the dry riverbed.

The body took three more steps forward, then its knees buckled, and it fell face-down into a pile of gravel, never moving again.

Josie slowed down. Arsie came to a gradual stop beneath her, the hum of her levitation engine dropping to a near-whisper, like a metal predator lying in wait.

She didn’t dismount; she simply turned her gaze to scan the other fallen figures scattered across the wasteland, just to double-check.

One lay face-down beside a clump of dead shrubs, a large gash torn open in the animal hide on its back. Another lay curled up beside the wreckage of an abandoned truck, still clutching a machete in its hand, its blade caked with dust. And one lay face-up in the middle of the riverbed, a large section of its chest caved in, eyes wide open, staring up at the iron-gray sky. Six in total. All from the Pack. All dead.

“Very good. Now there’s not a single piece of trash left in this place.” She holstered her pistol, a satisfied smile flickering beneath her mask.

This time, she’d led a six-man reconnaissance squad out specifically to hunt down the remnants of the Pack. Just before they set out, the General had summoned her to the operations room and pointed to the wilderness in the northern part of Nuka-World on the map.

“Not a single one can be left alive this time. If even one survives to tell the tale, it’ll be a huge problem down the road.”

Josie was a bit puzzled at the time. Leaning against the edge of the operations room table, she tilted her head and asked:

“Isn’t it just a gang? Once the boss is dead, the underlings will loot what’s left and run off. It won’t be long before they wear themselves out.”

Jace looked up from the map and gave her a glance. He set down his pen and began to explain.

“The Pack is different from other Raiders.”

“They can’t really be called a Raider gang anymore.”

“First, they have their own distinct identity. They worship strength and ferocity, and every member dresses in animal-themed gear, wearing animal costumes or hides, fanged helmets, and necklaces made from the teeth of prey or enemies.”

“Second, they know how to train wild dogs and mutated beasts. Those creatures fight beside them, eat with them, and sleep beside their campfires. That kind of skill is rare in the Wasteland.”

“More importantly, they have their own rules. Leadership changes are settled by a one-on-one duel between the old and new chiefs; they don’t drag the rest of the gang into a civil war. For a Raider gang to manage that in the Wasteland means they’re becoming something more enduring. They’re closer to a tribe.”

Jace paused, reached across the table to pick up his glass, took a sip of water, and then continued:

“And on the Wasteland, this kind of tribal organization is incredibly resilient. Defeated, driven out, slaughtered, as long as a small handful of people remain, and as long as those rituals celebrating strength and the wild are still sung around the campfire, they can rise again from the cracks in the wasteland. You think you’ve wiped them out, but ten years later, you’ll hear the same war chants and see the same fanged necklaces in another place.”

Josie’s expression gradually grew serious.

Jace could tell her confusion hadn’t completely dissipated, so he set down his cup and held up a finger:

“Let me give you an example. The last gang like this was called the Great Khans.”

Josie caught on immediately; she’d read the biographies of the Vault Dweller and the Chosen One and knew this gang,

The Great Khans, also known as the Khan Gang. Founded in 2141 by survivors of Vault 15.

In 2161 (Fallout 1), they were decisively defeated by the Vault Dweller.

By 2241 (Fallout 2: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game), they were wiped out by the Chosen One, a descendant of the Vault Dweller.

By 2278 (New Vegas), the Great Khans decided to migrate east to the Mojave.

There, with the help of the Followers of the Apocalypse, they settled down, but they remained as lawless as ever, repeatedly raiding NCR caravans, outposts, and settlers.

The NCR finally reached its limit and decided to raid their camp, but due to faulty intelligence, they mistakenly identified Bitter Springs as the Great Khans’ main combat camp

(Note: This may not have been a mistake, considering the Great Khans had been at odds with the NCR for over a hundred years, even the most patient people have their limits.)

This ultimately led to the Bitter Springs Massacre, Snipers fired indiscriminately at fleeing civilians, resulting in the tragic deaths of countless innocent women and children. Afterward, NCR leadership simply classified the incident as an intelligence failure, with no substantive accountability.

Even so, the remnants of the Great Khans managed to survive in the Mojave Wasteland.

(Note: By 2296, the timeline of the Fallout TV series, the Great Khans were still alive. Yes, they had taken over Novac (that dinosaur motel in New Vegas), as seen in Episode 1 of Season 2 of the Fallout TV series, titled “The Innovator”.)

Jace finished his last sip of water, set the cup down on the table, and it made a soft yet distinct clink.

“Got it? That’s the resilience of the savage tribes. As long as there’s a single survivor left, a single campfire burning, or a single war song bellowed across the wilderness, they can make a comeback. So.”

He tapped the red circle on the map with his knuckles,

“The Pack must be eradicated root and branch. Not a single survivor. This is something we have to do ourselves; we can’t leave it to future generations.”

With that thought, Josie twisted the throttle, and Arsie accelerated once more, sweeping past the fallen corpses on the wilderness and racing toward the next ambush point.

Dark clouds from the Radstorm were gathering in the northwest. The sky had shifted from iron gray to a murky yellow-green, and the air was taking on that restless, electrified smell. It was time to find shelter.

She looked up and scanned the area through the polarized lenses of her visor.

The nuclear wasteland was completely empty, no more figures clad in animal skins and painted with totems, no more howls of wild dogs in the distance, no more acrid stench of burning corpses from campfires, no more sound of whips cracking against slaves’ backs.

Only the low murmur of the wind sweeping across the gravelly ground, and the silhouettes of distant mountain ranges against the dusky yellow sky.

She muttered something under her breath; her voice was muffled by the visor, audible only to herself.

“Without those scumbags around, even the wasteland looks this beautiful in weather like this.”

She was indeed in high spirits.

Yesterday, citing the reconnaissance unit’s outstanding performance in the arena, the General had issued each of them a brand-new stealth reconnaissance motorcycle.

Arsie returned to her side. She had spent the entire night giving her beloved bike a thorough overhaul, wiping down the frame, re-oiling the magnetic bearings of the levitation engine, calibrating the projection angle of the holographic navigation system, and inspecting every port and cable, not stopping until three in the morning.

Now Arsie boasted a brand-new matte black body, its paint shimmering softly in the overcast light, and the holographic navigation interface on the dashboard was as pristine as the day it left the factory, not a speck of Wasteland dust in sight.

First thing this morning, she rode it out, tearing across the wasteland as if to let off steam, throttle wide open, drifting through turns, cutting through cracked riverbeds and rocky slopes, kicking up a trail of dust and debris.

Suddenly, a communication alert sounded. The holographic screen on the dashboard flickered, and a green incoming call icon popped up. It was Emma, stationed in the Safari Adventure Zone.

“Josie, do you read me?”

“Copy that,” Josie said, slowing down as Arsie’s levitation engine dropped from a high-speed hum to a low, rumbling idle. “What’s up? Did something happen over there?”

“Something’s definitely happened.”

...

Not long ago.

Emma was patrolling the Safari Adventure Zone in her T-51 Power Armor.

This area, located in the central-eastern part of Nuka-World, was originally a hunting-themed attraction within a theme park, now, it serves as the Minutemen’s eastern outpost.

The power armor’s hydraulic joints emitted a rhythmic, low-pitched hiss with each step, steady and powerful. Just a few minutes earlier, she had single-handedly taken down a Gatorclaw, a new creation spewed forth by the Replicator. When the creature lunged out of the grass, she barely had time to react, but her combat instincts, honed over years of battle, kicked in faster than her conscious mind, and the power armor’s support systems locked onto the target simultaneously. She sidestepped and delivered a backhand blow with her armored fist, slamming it hard into Gatorclaw’s cheek. The beast let out a short, agonized howl and toppled to the ground. Seizing the moment, she straddled it and rained down a barrage of punches, more than a dozen to the head, until the body lay completely still.

The sensor array inside her helmet scanned the surrounding brush and ruins; aside from a few rad-rats and several antelopes on the distant hillside, the thermal sensors detected nothing out of the ordinary. The area was so quiet that all she could hear was the wind and the low hum of the power armor’s hydraulic pumps running intermittently.

Cito peered out from behind a dead oak tree, holding a small ape by the hand. The little ape crouched on his shoulder, its furry little fingers tugging at his collar, its dark, shiny eyes darting about anxiously.

“Cito.”

Emma stopped in her tracks and took a deep breath:

“Is something wrong?”

Cito looked up, his eyes wide.

“Cito saw someone carrying something out. They were wearing colorful clothes and had horns on their head.”

Emma’s expression changed instantly. Colorful clothes and horns on their head? Wasn’t that a Pack Raider wearing a plush suit and a deer-antler helmet? The area around the Safari Adventure Zone had already been swept several times by the Minutemen, how could someone from the Pack still have slipped in?

“Which way did that person run?” she asked urgently.

Cito stretched out his arm, pointing northeast, his finger steady as it traced the course of the river upstream:

“He ran upstream.”

Upstream? Emma’s mind raced.

Heading north along the river from this direction, there was only one place, Northpoint Reservoir.

Because that area was right next to the Nuka-Cola bottling plant in the World of Refreshment, both the water and soil were severely contaminated with radiation. The entire area surrounding the reservoir was like a sponge soaked in poison. It was home to vast numbers of mirelurks, ranging from ordinary hunters to glowing mirelurks that emitted a green light, so numerous that you could stir up a whole swarm just by tossing a rock into the water.

If you’re unlucky, you might even run into a Nukalurk King, a humanoid mutant that hunts for food on behalf of the Nukalurk Queen. It’s an amphibious, highly mobile creature capable of firing long-range sonic blasts with extreme penetrating power; a single strike is enough to injure the person beneath the power armor’s chest plate

In short, that area is extremely dangerous, among the reconnaissance unit, only Josie is permitted to enter that area to patrol or carry out missions; everyone else is strictly prohibited from approaching.

Emma immediately switched to Josie’s communication channel.

“Josie, something’s wrong!”

“What is it?”

“A Pack Raider is heading toward the dam.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. Then Josie’s voice came back, tinged with disbelief:

“What? Is he out of his mind? That place is swarming with mirelurks. Last time I was on the riverbank, I saw three glowing mirelurks fighting over the remains of a Deathclaw.”

Emma shared her assessment. “He’s probably trying to scale the dam and slip into the mountains upstream so we can’t catch him.”

“All right,” Josie’s voice carried a hint of eager excitement,

“I’m going after him right now. He can’t get far.”

“Wait!”

Emma wanted to give a few more instructions, but the hum of the engine revving up and the sound of the wind were already coming through the comm, Josie had hung up.

She lowered her hand from the earpiece, turned to look at Cito, thought for a moment, and asked one more question:

“What did that man carry away?”

Cito frowned, as if struggling to find the right words.

But just then, the little gorilla on his shoulder suddenly became unusually agitated. It jumped down from Cito’s shoulder, grabbed the hem of his pants with both forelimbs, and tugged him hard toward the riverbank, squeaking rapidly.

Cito looked down at the little gorilla, then looked up again, his gaze hardening.

“Cito doesn’t know. It knows. It says, ‘Follow it.’”

Cito followed the little gorilla, Emma followed Cito, and the three of them jogged along the riverbank. The river water was murky and greenish, reflecting the light of the grayish-yellow sky.

The reeds along the bank had been trampled by something, marks as if a large creature had crawled out of the water and then retreated back in. As Emma ran, she studied the tracks, feeling a growing sense of tension.

The little gorilla stopped on a gravelly stretch along the riverbank. It crouched down, sniffed the ground with its nose, and then let out a short cry.

Emma walked over, the soles of her boots scraping softly against the gravel. She looked down and saw a dug-out pit.

The pit was about half a meter deep, its edges turned up with soil that still bore the damp, fresh marks of recent digging. The mud inside gave off a strong, fishy stench mixed with a sickly sweet odor reminiscent of rotting flesh.

Several eggs lay at the bottom of the pit.

Most had been trampled or smashed, but a few remained intact, each about the size of a football, with reddish-brown shells covered in dark brown spots and a thick, hard calcified layer that glowed with a rough, matte sheen in the gray, overcast light.

Emma crouched down and carefully lifted an intact egg from the pit. It felt heavy, much heavier than she had expected.

She leaned closer to peer inside a broken eggshell.

Then her pupils suddenly contracted.

The young creature inside the eggshell had already taken shape, a Gecko-like creature, curled up in the egg fluid, its body roughly the length of an adult’s forearm.

Its limbs were fully formed; the hooks on its front claws were clearly visible, each with a slight curve and a translucent, keratinous sheen at the tips.

Along its spine ran a row of tiny, unhardened bony plates, neatly arranged like a row of saw teeth that hadn’t yet fully opened.

Its tail was coiled around its abdomen like a whip, and the bony protrusion at its tip had already formed, glistening faintly as it soaked in the egg fluid.

Its mouth was slightly agape, revealing two rows of dense, sharp fangs, their tips as white as shards of porcelain.

This is a Gatorclaw egg.

Emma’s hand trembled slightly.

Something seemed to “buzz” in her mind, weren’t all the Gatorclaws in the Safari Adventure Zone female? There were no male individuals at all.

Then how did these eggs come to be?

Could it be, that Gatorclaws can lay eggs on their own without males? Judging by the fully formed embryo inside this broken egg, these eggs can hatch normally!

That Raider stole several eggs!!

Emma jumped to her feet, and the unhatched egg slipped from her hand, crashing onto the gravel. It cracked with a “smash,” spilling pale pink egg fluid and the undeveloped embryo all over the ground.

She immediately pressed the communication button by her ear, her voice so frantic it was almost unrecognizable:

“Josie! Can you hear me? You must destroy those eggs, don’t let them be taken out of Nuka-World, do you hear me?!”

The communication channel was filled only with hissing static, interspersed with occasional bursts of static noise, like a clump of shredded cotton. There was no response.

She looked up at the sky.

Above Nuka-World, a Radstorm had already taken shape.

What had been just a small, dark cloud to the northwest moments ago had now swelled into a massive yellow-green curtain, obscuring half the sky as it pressed forward slowly and inexorably from the direction of the Commonwealth.

Dark green fluorescence churned, swirled, and burst within the cloud, like a giant electric grid breathing slowly in the sky.

The wind began to pick up.

At first, it was merely a breeze rustling the tips of the reeds, but within seconds it had turned into a howling gale, whipping up gravel and sand that pelted the chest plate of her power armor, producing a rapid, crackling sound.

The radiation counter began beeping rapidly, the reading soaring from 0.1 rad per hour to 8 rad, 12 rad, 20 rad, and still climbing.

In weather like this, a portable communicator was nothing but a hunk of scrap metal. Severe disturbances in the ionosphere completely cut off all wireless signals; even a distance of a few hundred meters felt like a wall blocking everything.

“Damn it,” Emma spat, turning off the incessantly beeping communicator and stuffing it into the armored lining of her power armor.

She glanced at the shattered eggshells on the ground, then turned back to look at Cito and Little Ape.

“Cito,”

Emma’s voice was whittled down by half in the wind, so she raised her voice,

“Head back first. Wait until the storm passes. Josie has Arsie; she should be able to catch up to that guy.”

As she said this, there was a hint of uncertainty in her voice that even she didn’t notice.

Arsie was certainly fast, but the wasteland was vast, the Radstorm fierce, and those Gatorclaw eggs… if they’d truly been carried out of Nuka-World, what would the consequences be? She dared not think it through.

...

Elsewhere.

“Josie… must be destroyed… can’t let it.”

Josie brought Arsie to a halt beneath the ruins of an abandoned farmhouse. She checked the communicator she was carrying, nothing but static.

Under these weather and terrain conditions, the signal simply couldn’t get through.

She turned off the communicator and pulled a paper map sealed in a plastic bag from Arsie’s storage compartment.

In the Wasteland, a paper map was always more reliable than electronic navigation. It couldn’t be disrupted by Radstorms, didn’t need power, and wouldn’t turn into a glowing piece of scrap at a critical moment.

She unfolded the map.

The terrain of the northwestern Nuka-World, a river stretched southward from the Northpoint Reservoir, flanked by swamps and gravel bars.

If that Raider wanted to stay alive, he certainly wouldn’t approach the reservoir along the river.

The number and aggressiveness of the mirelurks over there are several times greater than those downstream, and with this Radstorm, the mirelurks actually become more active; radiation acts like a stimulant to them.

Even the most death-defying madman wouldn’t head in that direction just to throw his life away.

So there’s only one place he can go.

Josie’s finger traced the contour lines on the map all the way north. After about fifteen kilometers, the river was cut off by a thick black line: the dam at Northpoint Reservoir.

To the east of the dam, a dashed line indicates a highway; following it south-southeast leads to a place name circled on the map.

Bradberton.

Josie tucked the map away. Arsie’s engine resumed its low hum, and the vehicle rose into the air, turning toward Bradberton.

The Radstorm roared behind her, and a wall of yellow-green mist was devouring the wasteland inch by inch.

She twisted the throttle, and the thrusters at the rear of the vehicle spewed a pale blue trail of exhaust, tracing a brief, bright path through the yellow-green mist.