An Arctic Wolf on the Prowl [Under Planning]

The Knight Sergeant sat back and the metal groaned once more. He hadn't expected that story.

Alec picked up his helmet and stared into the eye ports. In the scarred bulletproof glass his image was reflected back, albeit, distorted and marred by the scratches and scars on the armor. He imagined that this reflection was similar to the way Spark's saw himself.

"For what its worth Coyote, I won't say I know what you're feeling, I don't and I pray I never have to. I won't say your life will become better or that you'll ever get over what you had to do. But I will say one thing: You're still here. And that's more than can be said for most people."

With that, Alec donned his helmet and put his back to the firelight. He knew it hadn't been a particularly motivational speech, but he hoped it would give the man something to focus on and remember when he needed it. Alec sat silently, letting his eyes adjust to the wasteland darkness.

He listened to the sounds the night made. The noises out here we're altogether more frightening than the ones in the citadel. It made him wonder that much more at the people who managed to survive and even thrive out here.

As soon as Alec had heard the shots and seen the raiders, he knew Sparks was going after them. For as cold and bitter as Sparks liked to think he was, Alec had already seen through that façade. He saw a man who hid himself in a cloak of bitterness but on the inside he only wanted to atone for what he had done.

Alec knew that telling him that the only person Coyote had to forgive was himself would do less than no good. Alec was an outsider, he hadn't been there, hadn't seen what Sparks had to do. He would just make the man mad.

Even so, Coyote had a noble streak that rather appealed to the Knight Sergeant. Maybe it was something the Brotherhood had ingrained in the man, but Alec rather doubted it. Selflessness on the scale Coyote was about to show could not be taught.

Alec saw Sparks moving and in a flash the man was past him, running full tilt down the hill towards the raiders and the young boy. What is he even doing out here, was the thought foremost in Alec’s mind. Coyote dug his heels into the side of the hill, dislodging a large amount of scree with his passage.

Alec looked at the man as he stood up, watching the way Coyote moved. The other man wasn’t really thinking about what he was doing, Alec could tell. Coyote was rushing, not considering all the variables before launching head first into danger.

The Knight Sergeant often found his mind thinking overly fast and about things that did not pertain to his current situation when he was in danger. The thoughts were there and gone in an instant.

Alec decided that Coyote wouldn’t be satisfied until his penance was completed. The Knight wondered if Coyote would know when that was. Probably not. Alec shook his head and prepared for what would come next.

The Knight rose and collected his rifle. Alec turned on the low-light filters in his helm and began stumbling and slipping down the hill after the man. Alec managed to get to the bottom without falling over and he powered towards the group of figures ahead of him.

Alec was not made for sleuthing. Neither was his armor. But the Knight was determined to make it work.

Alec, in a crouch, awkwardly waddled over to the brush Coyote had mentioned. He surveyed the situation, picking out targets and planning a route. The Knight Sergeant quickly determined, much to his disappointment, there really was not a way to sneak past these raiders. Alec knew that he had to get as close as he could without being detected and take down the raiders closest to the child.

Alec needed a distraction.

The Knight pulled out some of his collected items and took stock. A small spool monofilament copper wire, a few pieces of rubber hosing, several pre-war pen flares, and three super-dense fusion batteries, and some assorted sized bulbs he’d collected earlier.

The Knight had an idea and he slowly made his way towards a burnt out army semi-truck balanced on the side of the road near the raiders. They were being loud, toying with the kid now. They didn’t even want anything except the sick pleasure of hurting a helpless child. Alec was not a fan of that.

Alec almost had to crawl down the hillside, his armor was not meant for this. After he managed to get on level ground, he sidled towards the truck, keeping as low as his armor would allow. The thickness of the truck, added to the noise caused by the raiders, helped to counteract the subtle whirring of ticking of his armor and its damaged plates.

Alec got to the truck, and pulled off the cracked headlight cover and placed the pieces gently on the ground. He moved the light and its mount out of the way and grabbed the wiring behind it. Alec yanked the wires out of the truck and used his gauntleted hands to break the copper wire in several places to make similar length pieces for his use. He then spliced the copper wire and the headlight wires together, making them longer. Alec then wrapped one wire around the positive battery terminal and the other to the negative.

Nothing happened.

Alec cursed and looked up to see the child get thrown to the ground. Alec quickly screwed the dead bulb out of the socket and disconnected one of the wires from his battery so his plan wouldn’t be ruined early. With the new bulb in place, Alec snuck back around behind the truck and slammed his gauntleted fist into a quarter-panel as hard as he could. At the same time Alec reconnected the wire to the battery and the headlight illuminated the dark like a bolt of lightning. Alec hit the truck a couple more times and caused the light to flicker. The raider’s noises and yells turned to the truck.

Alec peered around one of the truck’s raised fenders and saw that the boy had been subdued and left mewling on the ground. The full force of the raider party was coming to greet the Knight. Alec took the rest of his wire, one of his pen flares, and a grenade and fashioned a tripwire. He forced the grenade/ flare duo in the space between the fender and the hood of the truck and strung the wire from there to a nearby signpost, snapped off at the top by the truck’s crash. With his trap set, Alec hurriedly moved away from the scene, keeping the truck between him and the approaching raiders.

Alec hunkered down behind a massive boulder and waited for the fireworks to start. Soon enough, the distinctive KRUMP of a grenade going off split the air, and a moment after, the truck burst into flames.

Coyote chose this moment with all the noise and confusion to begin picking off targets. His first shot was perfect, nailing the raider leader through the side of his head. Just after that shot the hood of the truck blew off, indicating perfectly its volatile intent. Alec knew that the child sprawled out on the ground a few yards away from the truck was not far enough away from the soon-to-be kill radius of the fusion powered truck’s explosion.

Alec sprang from cover, putting his body between the boy and the truck and ran. The raiders confusion turned to panic as they fled from the burning truck, Coyote continued to fire, putting down another one.

Alec grabbed the boy and dove behind a pile of fallen boulders just as the night turned to day and the truck’s derelict nuclear reactor exploded, showering the area with radiation and molten metal. Those raiders not killed by the grenade or Spark’s bullets were vaporized by the massive damage from the blast.

Alec stayed down until the fire and light stopped. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the boy yet lived.

Alec watched the kid go, saying nothing. He didn’t know what it was like to have to survive the way that kid does. He had always had the walls of the Citadel to protect him, even as an adult. In a way, Alec knew that, that little boy was stronger than even a Knight Sergeant of the Brotherhood.

He shook his head, not entirely agreeing with Coyote. That kid had seen death up close, he’d be careful now. He was blooded, sort of. he'd been introduced to the wasteland properly, in any event. But in a way, Coyote was right, the kid would have died if not for them. It didn’t matter now, he was gone. The Knight turned to Sparks.

“We’ve got to pack up and move. We’ve caused too much disturbance in this area. More raiders or mutants or worse will come to investigate. I don’t want to be here when they do.”

Sparks nodded and loped off towards their hilltop hide-away. Alec begrudgingly began his awkward dance back up the hill, slipping and sliding the whole way.

Alec woke up long enough to take his damaged plates off. A sizable screw-in bearing with a gasket around it held the pauldron of his armor on. Alec took a flat point homemade screwdriver and worked the gasket seal out of its home before detaching the bearing itself.

Alec lifted the twelve pound pauldron off its mount and flexed his shoulder muscles. He lifted his arm above his head and enjoyed the freedom of motion. His armor was a second skin, but it had its flaws. Alec laid the armor plate down next to where Coyote sat. He couldn’t remove the rest of the armor without the proper tools back at the Citadel. The pauldron was the Knight Sergeant’s biggest concern though; it had been hampering his ability to move his arm which had caused his balance to become almost nonexistent.

With his armor being repaired, Alec slept for a few hours until he became restless. He awake with a start and grabbed his pistol by the grip. Coyote arched an eyebrow but said nothing. Alec grimaced and sat up.

“Sorry, bad dreams.”

This was the only explanation the Knight offered. Alec got up and started rummaging around under the overpass, He notices Coyote watching, seemingly waiting for an explanation as to what he was doing. Alec said

“I need this armor, and I need to move. I’m not used to snow here in the wasteland. I’m looking for something to build snow shoes out of, something to distribute my weight across the snow so that I don’t sink into it so badly. I won’t be able to run, but with snow shoes, I can keep up.”

With his explanation complete, Alec returned to searching the area. He and Coyote were not the first people to camp here. Years of detritus and remnants of human existence lay scattered about. Alec saw the remains of an old Corvega coupe near one of the stanchion supports that, at one time, held up the road above it.

Alec approached the car and looked inside. Its seats were still intact. The Knight Sergeant smiled and began removing the seat covering. Just as he suspected, lightweight and durable aluminum tubing made up the frame of this seat bottom. Alec found an old jigsaw blade in the back of the car, along with a broken broom handle. He fashioned a handle for the blade by cutting a deep divot out of the broom handle piece with his combat knife and slotting the saw blade in and tying it to the wood.

Alec began to saw into the tubing, gathering four roughly ten inch pieces and four roughly six inch pieces from the front bench seat of the car. He took the pieces and laid them aside. Next, Alec ripped one of the side view mirrors off and broke the mount from its moorings. He laid this with the tubing. The Knight Sergeant crawled into the car, what was left of its suspension squealed under his weight. In the back, Alec found a small bit of non-rotten cargo netting lying on the floor in a pile of corroded rust. Alec assumed that the rust used to be whatever had, at one time, resided in the netting. He took the netting and laid it aside too. The Knight Sergeant cut out the seat belt straps with his combat knife and laid them in his pile as well. He then ripped a piece of paneling off of the car’s frame and laid it aside; he went to the reverse side and tore the remaining mirror off so that he had two of everything. Soon, this pile would become a pair of snowshoes.

Alec took his small pop rivet hand tool and his rivets and went to work. He placed two of the ten inch tubes at thirty degree angles and secured them to the strip of paneling. Then the Knight took two of the shorter pieces and put them on the back of the piece of paneling at a thirty degree angle as well and riveted them in place. The cargo net was spread between the angled tubes and acted as a way to disperse his immense weight. Alec bracketed his feet with the mirror mounts, one in the front and one in the back to keep his foot from sliding. He then attached the seatbelt to the paneling and tied it across his foot as tightly as he could. The Knight Sergeant took off his make-shift snowshoe and used it as a template for the other. He repeated the process and tried them on.

Alec took a few experimental steps and found that if he didn’t try to walk normally, heel to toe, and just picked his feet up without bending the ankles that he could walk more easily. He walked around for a bit, noticing the smirking from his companion as he did so. Alec spent an hour walking around and getting used to his new equipment. He came back to camp and removed them, finally ready to sleep even though dawn was only a couple hours away. "Wake me when we're moving out Sparks." As usual, the man gave an affirmative gesture with a wave of his bottle.

Coyote swings his sniper rifle, the scope lined right on the hunter’s head.

“Move a finger and you’re dead. Now, hands in the air and walk slow towards us.”

He spits on the ground, then gently kicks Alec’s armor, stirring the armored giant.

“So start talking. What’s your name?”

He clicks the bolt of the rifle forward, loud enough for the hunter to hear, knowing there’s a live in the chamber.