[ He lets Arcade lead as they skirt through the sickly bare woods toward the camp entrance, taking advantage of these last minutes where they're out of eyesight or earshot of the inhabitants. ]
Well, I'm hardly going to leave you out to dry. I'm just not exactly practiced with...this sort of thing.
[ But as long as he has agreed to it, he might as well commit, because doing it halfway will just ensure it doesn't work. ]
If the idea is to lull them into a false sense of security, we should agree on a signal to coordinate our attack once we're in position. I don't know if everyone in that camp will be in power armor, but I can try to get myself behind one of them and disable the fusion core if you hold their attention. Obviously we won't have time for more than that.
And if you need me to contribute to the story, I'll...I mean, I'll do my best. We can claim to have come from Adams, if they ask.
[ It would be a plausible enough tale, two soldiers fleeing a burning Enclave base under the impression that its regional power had been broken and blending into the wasteland population for a decade, even if Arcade didn't know firsthand what that was like.
Between the two of them, they might be able to provide enough combined detail to keep these people talking for a few minutes, and give them a reason to think their new recruits won't literally stab any of them in the back. Maybe. ]
[ Beyond the quiet kind of subterfuge - complex codes and hidden caches and keeping to the not-so-beaten path - Arcade isn't any better equipped to pull off a gambit like this. But it really does feel like their best option, with only the two of them.
So they'll both just have to learn to act on the fly. Or this'll just have to end in disaster - but Arcade wasn't going to count on that not being an inevitability, anyway. ]
Is reaching for my weapon too subtle a signal?
[ Maybe now isn't the best time for jokes, but Danse isn't the only one with a touch of that unfortunate gallows humor compulsion.
He sobers as he goes on, though. ]
It might be better if we claim to be from back West. There's too much of a chance they'll have actually known someone who did come from an East coast base.
[ It's doubtful, certainly, and that uncertainty is clear in his tone. These little pockets of Enclave holdouts weren't, to the best of Arcade's knowledge, still in communication even back before Navarro fell. The chances of that cloistered, violently exclusionary culture being all that different out here seem low. But why risk it? ]
...Not that I even knew East coast bases were still a thing, until now.
That ought to suffice. [ The humor in his voice is grim, but still in step with that tone, and sobering in that same moment. ] And that makes two of us. I really did think Adams was the last of them. I can't even guess as to where these ones came from.
[ But then, that was precisely the kind of blindness that had allowed the oil rig survivors to build their strength and become a threat to the Capital in the first place. Elder Lyons dismissing them as a lower priority than the super mutants until it was too late; wastelanders laughing at the "pre-war broadcasts" from the shabby old eyebots and asking if George Washington was going to come riding in to save the day too. ]
I thought maybe my familiarity with it could lend some extra credibility, but I never set foot in the place until it was under Brotherhood control. I wasn't part of the assault.
At the time, I remember being furious that they were taking me off the front lines, making me guard the water distribution network instead, but in retrospect...maybe I was needed more there. We probably lost more soldiers to caravan raids while we were trying to get clean water to settlements than we did taking over the base, all told.
[ It had been a very different Brotherhood, when he'd first signed up. But either way, having knowledge that comes exclusively from that side of the war probably is more of a dangerous liability than a potential help, and he considers further. ]
Are you proposing we come up with some fictitious Western base to namedrop, or say we're both from Navarro?
[ Arcade is quiet while Danse speaks, listening with a careful intensity. There's a lot he wants to ask, in the wake of so much explanation. But now doesn't feel like the time - so he files it away, instead, that curiosity put on a shelf for another day. Assuming they're going to see one.
When he answers Danse's question, his voice is as even as before, though he no longer feels that equilibrium. ]
Better to keep things simple, and as close to the truth as possible. We were originally from Navarro. You're a soldier, I'm a scientist.
[ There's a tilt of his helmeted head that seems to indicate a particular sidelong glance - the faint, tense smile obscured behind metal and darkly tinted glass. ]
That way, they won't expect you to talk much, regardless.
[ It's a strange tense balance, a topic Danse doesn't know how to navigate at all yet, let alone sensitively. He can reflect later, shamefaced, on the fact that there really would have been no sensitive way to bring up his younger self's resentment at having been denied the chance to take part in the kind of battle Arcade would have been caught on the other side of as a child. Not even when they're now preparing together to do the same thing to these forward camps. These are Enclave combatants, and he's spent his entire career taking for granted--never thinking about it, but assuming--that there were only combatants at Adams as well.
But would that necessarily have been the case? It was their Prydwen, and Danse has lost enough sleep before over the safety of the little squires aboard the Brotherhood's warship. He opens his mouth to say something, but he doesn't know what, doesn't have a thought sufficiently formed, and it isn't noticeable under the helmet anyway before Arcade is moving on. ]
I can do that.
[ And at this point, probably should. Hard to talk much with a power-armored foot in one's mouth. There's no more time left for it in any case, as they finally clear the trees and come within sight of the camp entrance. As Danse had predicted, the turrets detect them instantly, and swivel to lock on--
--but then, as Arcade had predicted, they switch off and return to rest. A trooper in full Hellfire armor, Tesla cannon aimed and ready, appears suspiciously at the gate to size them up--Danse in particular, with his suspiciously unmarked and basic model of armor, but still an X-01 for that--and only when the dark helmet's gaze tracks over to the insignia on the shoulder of Arcade's suit do things proceed. ]
Your reinforcements. Or was all that big talk over the airwaves just for show?
[ Arcade hardly sounds like himself, anymore, and the distortion of his voice through staticky speaker amplification can only be blamed for a fraction of that difference. It's easier to avoid all of the usual telltale signs of mistruth in his voice, though, when he thinks of it less like lying to strangers and more like... an impression. A combination of voices so familiar he can effortlessly summon them up in his mind (hearing them even when he'd rather not, at times). And thanks to the power armor, it's impossible to tell that he's sweating right through all of that padding.
Though for a moment it looks like the guard in the Hellfire suit might be able to, as he considers them silently. When he abruptly cocks his head to the side, Arcade can imagine him speaking into a radio, taking silent-to-them orders to take a step back and open fire along with the turrets— ]
Where did you get that armor?
[ He doesn't seem convinced, yet, but at least he isn't trying to kill them. Yet. Maybe this won't completely blow up in their faces, after all. ]
The same place my father did. It's an original issue suit from Navarro. You'll... have to excuse my associate, though. His armor didn't survive the cross-country trek.
[ He gestures to Danse, and a little of that anxiety is bleeding through, now. Just be convincing enough. ]
We - liberated this replacement from the locals. I hope you aren't all so loose with Enclave property, around here.
[ It's not the first time today that Danse has had this rare, strange opportunity to hear his lover sounding like someone he doesn't know at all, but it's harder this time to pin down how he feels about it. The lying is almost shockingly smooth, Railroad-smooth, and yet Danse can at least somewhat grasp how Arcade's pulling it off.
He can, in fact, try to back it up and feed into it as promised, with the same seat-of-his-pants improvisational energy he'd discovered an untapped well of back when Nora wanted to run around Goodneighbor cosplaying as a superheroine with a dashing burly bodyguard. ]
But from what we've been hearing, you've already had enough of a problem with that to need help. So why don't you let us through?
[ If there's anything Danse had anticipated being able to contribute here--beyond the well-worn and slightly condescending confidence of an officer accustomed to negotiating from a position of power, slipping itself back on of its own accord like a uniform--it would have been those details he'd learned from the Brotherhood, information they've both already considered and discarded as too dangerous to risk.
Instead, the unexpected opening Arcade leaves him is one he fills in with Minutemen intelligence, a flash of inspiration he capitalizes on before the moment can pass. More current, more relevant, less personally volatile even if there's a separate kind of inherent risk in pissing these soldiers off by reminding them that they have, in fact, been derelict enough in their duties to let technology fall into civilian hands. Even if they've taken some of it back already (with deliberate, punishing lack of concern for anyone with the misfortune to be in the same general vicinity of the thieves.) ]
That wasn't us. Lose the attitude, straggler.
[ There's something paradoxically reassuring, at least to Danse's sensibilities, about the clear angry tension in the trooper's voice. It's in-group anger, the lashing-out of a man who isn't considering it an option to kill them at the moment, because he's bought the premise well enough to think there might be a risk of consequence if he does.
It wouldn't have worked without that experience and familiarity in Arcade's voice, a tone Danse isn't replicating but that seems to have primed the soldiers in the camp to be more receptive to them both. Danse has the strong feeling this would be going very differently right now had he spoken first. They're waved forward through the barricades, into a camp even smaller than Danse had been prepared for, with only one other lightly-armored woman sitting at a terminal surrounded by eyebots in various stages of construction and repair.
The trooper gives her a terse, monotone rundown of the situation, repeating what Arcade's told him and pointedly leaving out Danse's needling, but this is apparently enough to incur another suspicious look as the scientist scrutinizes both of their armor for herself. ]
I've heard of Navarro. Didn't think anyone survived it.
[ She doesn't necessarily look old enough to have a reason to know that for herself. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Well, I'm hardly going to leave you out to dry. I'm just not exactly practiced with...this sort of thing.
[ But as long as he has agreed to it, he might as well commit, because doing it halfway will just ensure it doesn't work. ]
If the idea is to lull them into a false sense of security, we should agree on a signal to coordinate our attack once we're in position. I don't know if everyone in that camp will be in power armor, but I can try to get myself behind one of them and disable the fusion core if you hold their attention. Obviously we won't have time for more than that.
And if you need me to contribute to the story, I'll...I mean, I'll do my best. We can claim to have come from Adams, if they ask.
[ It would be a plausible enough tale, two soldiers fleeing a burning Enclave base under the impression that its regional power had been broken and blending into the wasteland population for a decade, even if Arcade didn't know firsthand what that was like.
Between the two of them, they might be able to provide enough combined detail to keep these people talking for a few minutes, and give them a reason to think their new recruits won't literally stab any of them in the back. Maybe. ]
no subject
[ Beyond the quiet kind of subterfuge - complex codes and hidden caches and keeping to the not-so-beaten path - Arcade isn't any better equipped to pull off a gambit like this. But it really does feel like their best option, with only the two of them.
So they'll both just have to learn to act on the fly. Or this'll just have to end in disaster - but Arcade wasn't going to count on that not being an inevitability, anyway. ]
Is reaching for my weapon too subtle a signal?
[ Maybe now isn't the best time for jokes, but Danse isn't the only one with a touch of that unfortunate gallows humor compulsion.
He sobers as he goes on, though. ]
It might be better if we claim to be from back West. There's too much of a chance they'll have actually known someone who did come from an East coast base.
[ It's doubtful, certainly, and that uncertainty is clear in his tone. These little pockets of Enclave holdouts weren't, to the best of Arcade's knowledge, still in communication even back before Navarro fell. The chances of that cloistered, violently exclusionary culture being all that different out here seem low. But why risk it? ]
...Not that I even knew East coast bases were still a thing, until now.
no subject
[ But then, that was precisely the kind of blindness that had allowed the oil rig survivors to build their strength and become a threat to the Capital in the first place. Elder Lyons dismissing them as a lower priority than the super mutants until it was too late; wastelanders laughing at the "pre-war broadcasts" from the shabby old eyebots and asking if George Washington was going to come riding in to save the day too. ]
I thought maybe my familiarity with it could lend some extra credibility, but I never set foot in the place until it was under Brotherhood control. I wasn't part of the assault.
At the time, I remember being furious that they were taking me off the front lines, making me guard the water distribution network instead, but in retrospect...maybe I was needed more there. We probably lost more soldiers to caravan raids while we were trying to get clean water to settlements than we did taking over the base, all told.
[ It had been a very different Brotherhood, when he'd first signed up. But either way, having knowledge that comes exclusively from that side of the war probably is more of a dangerous liability than a potential help, and he considers further. ]
Are you proposing we come up with some fictitious Western base to namedrop, or say we're both from Navarro?
no subject
When he answers Danse's question, his voice is as even as before, though he no longer feels that equilibrium. ]
Better to keep things simple, and as close to the truth as possible. We were originally from Navarro. You're a soldier, I'm a scientist.
[ There's a tilt of his helmeted head that seems to indicate a particular sidelong glance - the faint, tense smile obscured behind metal and darkly tinted glass. ]
That way, they won't expect you to talk much, regardless.
no subject
But would that necessarily have been the case? It was their Prydwen, and Danse has lost enough sleep before over the safety of the little squires aboard the Brotherhood's warship. He opens his mouth to say something, but he doesn't know what, doesn't have a thought sufficiently formed, and it isn't noticeable under the helmet anyway before Arcade is moving on. ]
I can do that.
[ And at this point, probably should. Hard to talk much with a power-armored foot in one's mouth. There's no more time left for it in any case, as they finally clear the trees and come within sight of the camp entrance. As Danse had predicted, the turrets detect them instantly, and swivel to lock on--
--but then, as Arcade had predicted, they switch off and return to rest. A trooper in full Hellfire armor, Tesla cannon aimed and ready, appears suspiciously at the gate to size them up--Danse in particular, with his suspiciously unmarked and basic model of armor, but still an X-01 for that--and only when the dark helmet's gaze tracks over to the insignia on the shoulder of Arcade's suit do things proceed. ]
Who the hell are you two?
no subject
[ Arcade hardly sounds like himself, anymore, and the distortion of his voice through staticky speaker amplification can only be blamed for a fraction of that difference. It's easier to avoid all of the usual telltale signs of mistruth in his voice, though, when he thinks of it less like lying to strangers and more like... an impression. A combination of voices so familiar he can effortlessly summon them up in his mind (hearing them even when he'd rather not, at times). And thanks to the power armor, it's impossible to tell that he's sweating right through all of that padding.
Though for a moment it looks like the guard in the Hellfire suit might be able to, as he considers them silently. When he abruptly cocks his head to the side, Arcade can imagine him speaking into a radio, taking silent-to-them orders to take a step back and open fire along with the turrets— ]
Where did you get that armor?
[ He doesn't seem convinced, yet, but at least he isn't trying to kill them. Yet. Maybe this won't completely blow up in their faces, after all. ]
The same place my father did. It's an original issue suit from Navarro. You'll... have to excuse my associate, though. His armor didn't survive the cross-country trek.
[ He gestures to Danse, and a little of that anxiety is bleeding through, now. Just be convincing enough. ]
We - liberated this replacement from the locals. I hope you aren't all so loose with Enclave property, around here.
no subject
He can, in fact, try to back it up and feed into it as promised, with the same seat-of-his-pants improvisational energy he'd discovered an untapped well of back when Nora wanted to run around Goodneighbor cosplaying as a superheroine with a dashing burly bodyguard. ]
But from what we've been hearing, you've already had enough of a problem with that to need help. So why don't you let us through?
[ If there's anything Danse had anticipated being able to contribute here--beyond the well-worn and slightly condescending confidence of an officer accustomed to negotiating from a position of power, slipping itself back on of its own accord like a uniform--it would have been those details he'd learned from the Brotherhood, information they've both already considered and discarded as too dangerous to risk.
Instead, the unexpected opening Arcade leaves him is one he fills in with Minutemen intelligence, a flash of inspiration he capitalizes on before the moment can pass. More current, more relevant, less personally volatile even if there's a separate kind of inherent risk in pissing these soldiers off by reminding them that they have, in fact, been derelict enough in their duties to let technology fall into civilian hands. Even if they've taken some of it back already (with deliberate, punishing lack of concern for anyone with the misfortune to be in the same general vicinity of the thieves.) ]
That wasn't us. Lose the attitude, straggler.
[ There's something paradoxically reassuring, at least to Danse's sensibilities, about the clear angry tension in the trooper's voice. It's in-group anger, the lashing-out of a man who isn't considering it an option to kill them at the moment, because he's bought the premise well enough to think there might be a risk of consequence if he does.
It wouldn't have worked without that experience and familiarity in Arcade's voice, a tone Danse isn't replicating but that seems to have primed the soldiers in the camp to be more receptive to them both. Danse has the strong feeling this would be going very differently right now had he spoken first. They're waved forward through the barricades, into a camp even smaller than Danse had been prepared for, with only one other lightly-armored woman sitting at a terminal surrounded by eyebots in various stages of construction and repair.
The trooper gives her a terse, monotone rundown of the situation, repeating what Arcade's told him and pointedly leaving out Danse's needling, but this is apparently enough to incur another suspicious look as the scientist scrutinizes both of their armor for herself. ]
I've heard of Navarro. Didn't think anyone survived it.
[ She doesn't necessarily look old enough to have a reason to know that for herself. ]