FREV Chapter 04 (Patreon)

I looked at my sister for too long before I realized I was just staring. Why did they send her? Why is she so old in comparison to me? I needed answers. She waved her hand in front of my face before speaking again. “Hello, Earth to Duke, you in there?” My brain fires on all cylinders as I try and figure out how this happened before I know that not talking will be a bigger problem.

“Hello… Sister. It’s nice to finally meet you.” They hadn’t deemed my sister's name important enough to mention in the briefings before, only that I had a sister. I move my hand out to shake before she looks at it and instead pulls me into a hug. “Get out of here with that. You’re my brother, the least we should do is hug.” Electricity runs through my body as I have to hold back a moan. Over a hundred years without any physical contact and the first woman to touch me since my mother is my super attractive sister.

I’m not attracted to her, I’m not. I’M NOT! I break our hug by grabbing her shoulders and finally ask. “Why are you so old?” She looked at me with a smirk. “Oh, you know how it is. It was too costly electricity-wise to keep us both in the cryo pods. It was either me or the president of vault tec that needed to step out of their pod and it was me who was selected.” 

My eye twitches as I recognize the micro expressions showing that she was displeased that it happened in the first place. She kept speaking. “Well, it all happens for a reason. It means that I could join you on your mission now that you’re ready.” I really got a good look at her now. Tall, at least 6’10” but maybe even taller. Black straight hair hanging down past her shoulders about halfway down her back and a muscular frame from the R.E.V. in her body.

She was dressed in a blue vault tec uniform with the word ‘military’ across the front and her name tag read ‘Daisy’ across it. I couldn’t stifle my laugh as I read it and she looked at me questioningly before I answered. “Daisy dukes?” She looked confused at me. “Like the short shorts? Did you not watch Dukes of Hazzard in the simulation pod? Obviously not if you didn’t get why we were named the way we were.”

Well, there was no watching movies now. We’d be busy for the foreseeable future as the grizzled old man finally spoke. “Alright then. Now that you’ve had your sibling meetup, let’s go talk with the leaders again before we head out.” We head back up with the old man leading us. They tell us our mission again which seems like overkill. I think they were just happy that something big was happening after so long of stagnation.

I don’t understand why they didn’t just send my sister. If she was as skilled as me, it wouldn’t take much effort to overthrow whatever leadership the Enclave on the outside had. There was probably a reason, I just didn’t know why right now. I’ll have to ask her once we are free of this group. She kept glancing in my direction until we were finally given the go-ahead to leave.

There was an aquatic exit we could take tied to Lake Nipigon. It was only not revealed because if the vault dwellers started using it and someone betrayed us and ratted out the location then the Enclave would have to surrender to the group outside to ever leave the vault. Only the highest-ranking members of the Enclave knew of the hidden exit as well.

All of us began to suit up. I was given a suit of General power armor while the old man and my sister put on Scout armor. The reason I was the only one in the strongest power armor was that we only had three sets left after the original attack on the vault. The mousey engineer(named Cindy) didn’t put on any armor, instead, she loaded herself up with boxes of supplies carrying several on her back as she put a rebreather into her mouth. 

We each selected weapons. The ranged weapons were standard with all of us including Cindy taking a recharger weapon and all of us except Cindy taking a Gauss rifle. I had selected the recharger shotgun, both the old man and Daisy picked a rifle and Cindy picked a pistol as her recharger weapon. They would refill over time but they could still break down if overused so it was better to go into melee in my opinion at least.

I picked up many melee weapons while the old man picked the standard military sword and ripper. Daisy went with the flaming sword and Cindy picked just a sword. I picked many of the unique weapons specially made for generals, including the dual-power fists my mother used that needed to be attached to the outside of my power armor by someone else. If I wanted to take them off someone else would also have to help with that.

Besides the two fists, I picked two swords, rippers and flaming swords. Each is a different unique piece made for a different general specifically, each doing something moderately better than the rest. I was just happy they let me take so many. Besides the supplies Cindy was given, we have our own kits loaded with two weeks' worth of rations and the normal military kit you could expect before the bombs dropped.

C.A.M.P. module with a tent installed, 1000 caps which was the money they used outside the vault, a sleeping bag, canteens of water, medical supplies on top of stimpaks and med-X,  drugs, ten fragmentation landmines, a G.E.C.K., and ten fusion cores along with some other essentials. Most of the supplies were being carried by Cindy for now. She was effectively our support and none of us expected her to realistically help in a fight when we did start fighting.

It was hard not to get hard by all the heavy breathing she was doing carrying the hundreds of pounds of supplies on her back. Sweat formed on her face and rolled down into her exposed cleavage. I catch my breath and look away only to see my sister grinning evilly at me as I speak up. “Alright, looks like we’re ready. Does anyone have anything else to do before we head out?”

My sister chimes up. “I think I might have left the oven on.” Even with her face covered by the armor, I could tell she had a smile on it. The old man rolled his eyes and spoke. “Let's get this over with.” We walked down a hallway for about five miles before we reached the end. The old man hit a button sealing us in as Cindy put the rebreather back into her mouth. Water started pouring in and besides the audio and visual I got from the outside of my suit I couldn’t even tell. I could see Cindy shake from the cold, the water was practically freezing but thankfully hadn’t iced over yet.

Soon enough we were fully submerged before the exit door finally opened. After we exited the old man turned around hitting a button on the outside and closing the door before the button was covered by a sheet of metal making it impossible to hit again on this side. No one panicked as we made our way west of the entrance. It would bring us fairly close to the city but with as heavily armed as we were I doubted anyone would bother us.

Even still we skirted the outside border of the city. Gigantic metal walls made of several different materials all forming a ring around the city with the only part exposed being the docks attached to the lake. I could see guard posts from the past completely unmanned, most likely the city deeming it a waste of resources to keep people staffed at them.

We walked for another three hours in complete silence before we finally began to bunker down and start to take off our power armor for the night. As the old man stepped a few paces away from his armor I shot him in the back exploding his head into several bits. I looked over at my sister who also had her gun trained at the man most likely about to do the same right before Cindy started screaming.