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[Dungeon of Stories] 43 – The Mojave under attack
🕑 Added 2025-04-21 05:25:04 +0000 UTCIn the dead of the night, in an open field north of the Sunset Sasparila Headquarters in fiend territory, the very air began to shake and vibrate, as if the very air was quaking from an unseen force. Then, with a flash of golden light, a small thread of energy tore into reality, cracking with the sound of thunder. This thread slowly started expanding, revealing a swirling vortex of energy.
It was so loud that everything within a few miles of the portal would have heard its opening, and of course, as Humans always did, they went rushing into danger, too curious for their own good.
The first to reach the site were of course the Fiends, with a distant Caravan also noticing the strange phenomenon, and as the moon fell and the sun rose, the golden portal thumped, like a heartbeat of a giant beast, before four different streams of energy flowed out from the swirling center of the portal, shocking the Fiends around the portal, as four shapes rivaling the size of cars took shape within the air.
Four [Corrupted Defense Units] materialized around the portal. With the speed of cars, these giant machines rolled into a ball and charged at the Fiends, one of the Defense Units running over a Fiend. In contrast, another Machine rolled up to a group of Fiends before swinging one of its two claw arms horizontally, bisecting each Fiend in one go.
The remaining Fiends screamed and shouted, firing their primitive weapons that barely chipped the exterior of the Defense Units. The only truly effective weapon proved to be the Plasma Rifle, one of the Fiends wielded, which melted through a Defense Unit's armor plating and damaged some non-critical systems.
When all of the Fiends lay dead, the four Defense Units scanned their surroundings. They seemed to split off from one another, one heading south, deeper into Fiend territory, one heading north, rolling down the highway, crushing and steamrolling through every car in its path, and the remaining two started rolling towards the distant, gleaming city in view from the portal.
...
[Some Time Later]
Pete was a junky, and his fix? Jet. A chem that slowed the world down around him and accelerated the speed of his thoughts to tremendous speeds, mix that with a few other drugs and chems, and he had a trip that felt like it lasted days when it only lasted a few hours in reality.
Yet, despite his trip, he could swear he heard screaming and shouts from the other side of the star-covered wall, and in his haze, he dismissed it as a mere illusion, that is, until a giant ball of plated metal rocketed through the wall, sending chunks of debree everywhere as its body continued its momentum directly into the building next to Pete, going right through the wall and out into the street on the other side.
Pete, in his high, merely continued to stare at the stars.
...
Meanwhile, the Defense Unit rolled across the street, a dozen Securitrons rolling out from the strip beyond the gate, all stating the same thing.
"Halt. This is a restricted area, you are under arrest," They repeated, over and over, until the rolling sphere changed directions and started rolling at flying speeds towards the Securitrons, who upon noticing the aggressive change in behavior, rose their arms, revealing the submachineguns that were integrated into their long noodly arms in between the three claw like digits on their flat hands.
When the sphere got close enough, with small-calibre rounds bouncing off the metal plating of its chassis, it unfolded and lunged forward, its claws glowing a faint blue, shredding through the first Securitron before moving on to the next.
A siren began blaring through the area, and in the distance, NCR soldiers could be seen storming through the gate behind the securitrons. Some of them wore different armor, and among them were the notorious Veteran Desert Rangers, wielding anti-material rifles, various assault rifles, and a few even had lever-action rifles.
Their rifles hardly did more than dent the armor of the Defense Unit; the only notable damage came from the Anti-material rifles, but with the hail of gunfire and the copious amount of Securitrons rolling out from the strip, the Machine was brought down soon enough, its chassis sparking. Its claws slumped to the ground as its critical systems shut down from the damage.
One of the Securitrons approached the lead officer in the area, claiming the machine was under his jurisdiction, under the guise that his city was under attack. So, he had the machine brought into the Lucky Thirty-eight, where he, controlling multiple securitrons and Mister Handys, started taking the strange robot apart.
It may have been two centuries since Robert House was a leading figure in the Robotics industry, but he was a brilliant man and an expert roboticsist, yet even he had no idea what he was looking at when he managed to get a peek at what lay under the metal plating of the chassis.
The technology was too advanced, and the fact that he had no idea what he was looking at was a great concern to House, especially since it was advanced technology in a field that he had been a pioneer in before the Great War.
The wiring was seamless, and the electronics were far more precise and miniature than anything House could produce before the Great War and now. Who could have created such a robot? Where did it come from? Why did it attack Freeside and Assault New Vegas? His city.
Before he could even come up with more questions, he got an alert that Camp McCarran, one of the few major NCR installations in the region and the NCR base directly next to New Vegas, the strange thing about this alert? It was another of these peculiar and advanced robots, and it seemed this second one was attacking the heavily defended base head-on.
With most of the Rangers needing time to return to camp after helping fend off the first robot, this second robot was dealing terrible damage to the base. The cameras in the base showed the robot rolling through the tents and over NCR troopers who had fled from the giant robot. Then he got yet another alert, this time from one of the cameras he had set watching the distant Fiend camp west of New Vegas, smoke was rising from afar.
What was going on? House wondered in confusion as alerts flooded his systems, reports from his agents, reports on casualties and property damages, and at the top of it all, a report from the mercenary he hired to investigate what the Crimson Caravan claimed to have seen in Fiend Territory, a report that was flagged by his systems as important.
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Wyatt MacMillan
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