Dusts of Avalon - Beastwithin.org

VI A Historic Meeting or TwoFebruary 15, 2632“T C B , dammit. Woohoo!” Newkinsshouted. “Hey, is that some Fren farmer hollering at us for puninga hole to his outhouse roof with a nuclear bomb?”Daleworth frowned. Damn rookies. at was not the sort of a thing peopleusually said aer a nuclear aa. Nuclear aas were very serious business.She guessed Private Newkins would go out and remove his helmet next, but sheknew that there were safety procedures about atomic aas that were preymu common sense by now. She trusted Newkins wasn't being quite that silly.“No, it's that robot from the damn space station, private”, Sergeant Hamansaid. “Look at that damn thing. Just awesome.”Daleworth looked. e “knight” was there. It said something in Fren, again.Daleworth was happy to hear that their strange metallic saviour from the skieswas still up and kiing — though that made her a lile bit apprehensive. If thatthing could survive a nuclear strike, maybe the Planners had, too.Daleworth peeked from behind the cover. e robot bastards weren't shootingat her, that seemed apparent. A bizarre sight awaited her: the Clean Boy hadmanaged to vaporise parts of the ship, but the very edges of the ship's body hadsurvived the blast, and the tail section was mostly intact. at scrap of metalcouldn't limp ba to the orbit, that mu was very obvious. Still, with the amountof twisted metal, cleanly severed and melted metal, and not a single bot in sight,the bale definitely had ended in their favour.Daleworth was looking at the radiation level meters; they were normally invisible,but now they still fluered on the screen. While the combat armour wasable to resist a massive enough hail of gamma rays, Daleworth was still concerned.e detectors that were part of the suit's computer system had spikedaer the nuclear strike, but that was — supposedly — just an instrument problemdue to the nuclear blast's electromagnetic pulse; the meter anticipated radiationlevels, and when the device detected an electromagnetic pulse, it automaticallyassumed there was a nuclear aa going on and adapted the readouts accordingly.In reality, however, the main force of the Clean Boy blast and the radiationwas supposed to be contained within a very small area; there was usually verylile damage to anything beyond the blast radius. at didn't mean there weren'tany accidents, especially when the Planner energy shielding was oen resistantto even larger nuclear weapons…Radiation levels following the aa would be slightly higher than usual, butmost was contained within a very small area — hence, the name of the warhead— and could be cleaned up in no time.