Part 56: Newton, Part 3: Would Be Called 'Nuketon' In Fallout 3

Things that would make this game better: no burst bug, destructable environment, enemy with any sort of AI.

Post 57: Newton, pt 3: Nothing New In Newton



With the Reaver elder secured (more or less) it was time to clean out the last two major buildings in the area.



Flashman did some heavy duty scouting – armed and armored like that, he was a walking incarnation of heavy scout car. The street was empty save for a dead Reaver, torn in twain and splayed out on the cracked asphalt.



The road leading away from central Newton was peppered with robot wreckage. No Reaver corpses there: that must have been a good ambush.



He did manage to find an another entrance to the factory parking lot – the previous one had been blocked by the wrecked tank robot. There was a solitary hover bot milling about.

How do you like irony, you flying little toaster?

In a feat of remarkable marksmanship, Flashman planted an rocket-propelled grenade straight into his hovering foe.



The dead Reavers didn't have anything of value, marking them as either civilian personnel caught by surprise, or great looting skill of retreating Reavers.



RPG launcher on his shoulder, Flashman checked out the factory floor. Seeing no hoverbots, he was sure that Reaver elder would safely make it back to extraction area.



Which he did. With some puzzlement, the elder noted that the tank wreck had been moved and restored. If this had been Brotherhood's field work, it was quite impressive.



The beauty of it all, thought Flashman, was that the Brotherhood didn't need Reavers to be friends. Between tribals, raiders and various abhumans, they had no lack of recruits. Any Reaver with technical and fighting skills would be welcome, but not desperately needed.



With that task completed, Flashman opted to check out the building which, according to Ice, housed a turret on the third floor.

Unsurprisingly, he found another two guarding the first floor entrance



However, all their attempts to kill Flashman were thwarted by his armor. It was surprising that no robots had gotten inside by this time: the turrets wouldn't have held them either.

For Flashman, this became an another tortuously long punching match, just like the first one he had experienced in an underground facility so long ago.



Sheer persistence and strange engineering – who the hell ever thinks that an army equipped power armor, robots and laser weapons needs a high-powered means of punching people - eventually won against the sturdy construction and the first turret was down.

The second was still shooting. It was a futile effort, but nobody had ever programed cost-benefit analysis into turrets.



Ice wandered in to see where Flashman had gone and immediately opened fire on the turret. Flashman was grateful: this pointless, repetitive punching was getting on his nerves, his shoulder was hurting and sweat was making the power fist uncomfortably damp.



However, one of the turrets held a cornucopia of 50 cal. Ammo. Strange, as the turret didn't fire BMG, but a welcome find nonetheless.



Just to the left of the turrets was stairway up... and a corridor to the rest of the building that was barred with sandbags.

Flashman had an idea.



Turned out that the random crap outside of the building wasn't just random crap, it was an disguised entryway.



This side of the building didn't have anything – nor loot nor turrets – so Flashman amused himself by opening the door to a room with one missing wall.



With his spirits lifted by that silly bit of shenanigans, Flashman climbed upstairs.



The was a mess of barbed wire, sandbags and ramshacle baricades. Flashman though he could see a corner office on the end of the floor, and a Reaver standing inside. That must have been the Elder.

Vary of any more surprises, he order half of the team to join him.



Not pictured: Flashman defusing a mine with his face

Of course, the room was mined. The mines had security measures and secondary traps, so the ladies decided that they would have to defuse it the old fashioned way – Mandy and Ice had to shoot the lot of them.

The building shook with every explosion and thin wisps of dust trailed from the ceiling.



The Reaver didn't even move, no matter the commotion.



Flashman wasn't one to wait, so he ran up the stairs where he found a robot – how did it manage to avoid the security to get there – a turret to pick a fight with.



With the mines and turrets (that may or may not have been disabled by a switch before Flashman antagonized them) out the way, the mutterings of the Reaver elder could be heard in the suddenly silent building.





For an ambassador, you cetrainly have a guarded manner. You are quite hard to approach



But forget my jest. You have to make your way to the extraction point!



Sending the raider away – the robots seemed to be content with holding their position and not wandering about – Flashman set out for the final complex.

A wrecked pacification robot laid in a crater nearby. It showed that Reavers clearly didn't go down easy. And if the local robots were tied to the pacification robot control as the ones in the previous mission, this would explain their current passivity.



Flashman was making his way towards an opening in the fence when he was once again ambushed and knocked out by a security bot.

After the team had rescued him once again, Flashman explained that power armor is really uncomfortable to fall down in.



Flashman got his vengeance after he found a humanoid robot. The bipedal machine stood no chance against the might of the M2 Browning.



It was one of the few robots that ever tried running, however, it could not outrun bullets. The robot's torso detonated as the damaged power cells melted down.



Flashman found a minigun and some ammo on the dead blighter.



He found the same plus a pair of hilariously ineffective grenades on the next robot he killed, too.



The Reaver Elders were sitting in the shade of the tank, dicussing how get the best out of thesituation that the Movement was in.



Pitiful robot resistance out of the way, Flashman went inside the last building marked on his tactical map.

pg

Stitch used the downtime to reflect on the recent medical practice he had. Being an irreplaceable asset, he didn't see much fighting these days, especially since the combat worth of shotguns had markedly diminished with the introduction of metal enemies.



The first floor of the building was mostly deserted, Flashman found only one raider, hiding behind a sandbag barrier and nervously clutching his gun.



The downstairs(ladders) was a lot cleaner. Before descending, Flashman ordered Ice to get in the building and check the second floor while he would probably be out of contact – Flashman was extremely suspicious of the squad radio working undergound.



Doing as ordered, Ice started a sweep. She didn't found much of interest at first, only rooms filled with giant computers – the tapes were still as the machines had been turned off.



One room did hold a pair of Reaver snipers waiting in ambush. Ice pilfered their goods and was gone before they even noticed her.



The basement was also filled with computer stacks, whirring away as the memory tapes wound and unwound. Flashman didn't know that the tapes could survive that long.



Finally, in one room, he found an Elder, flanked by two guards. By the process of elimination, Flashman determined that he was the actually important Elder.









Flashman liked the energy and determination of the Reaver Elder. Like the rest, he was urged to make haste to the evacuation area.



A strange gun occupied most of the safe. Flashman wasn't any expert on energy weapons, so it didn't look like anything special. Hell, it looked more like a pre-war artifact than anything new.



The Elder joined with the rest of his kin, and the squad started readying the tank for the trip. Flashman was slightly perturbed by the Reaver woman sending him winks and blowing kisses when she though no one was looking, so he opted to ride in the tank, as a “vanguard security measure”





With the Elders secure, Reaver pockets left in Newton began a fighting retreat, up until the point where they ran into the security ring of Brotherhood troops. They were disarmed and sent back to the rear for processing. The Brotherhood Elders would now decide their fate, whether they would be allowed to join the ranks of the Brotherhood – likelihood was high with the increasing pressure from the robots and the precedent of accepting even deathclaws – or be confined to work camps, where they'd rub elbows with the most recalcitrant raiders, beastlords, mutants and criminal scum.

The recovery of the EMP weapon was as great a boon as the news of kidnappings were troubling. Robots would have an easy time abducting humans: if they were not armed with heavy or energy weapons, the machine can just walk up, smash the gun out of their hands, and drag them away.

A non-lethal application of Flashman tactics.

Robot fighting is not fun, guys. Reavers were quite squishy and had interesting speech bits. I might be replacing Stein and Toni further on, because I'll be needing more energy weapon people who can also wear armor. Flashman has so much Brotherhood scrip, he uses it as padding in power armor.

I just wish that the game had more advanced/sturdier light armor than basic leathers.

Till next, my one, dear reader!