Continuing on our way, we later arrived in the general area of Warrington Station.
"You guys stay here. I'm going to check things out." I told my squad.
"Sure." Amata responded.
"Whatever you say, boss man." Don replied in his typical rough, ghoulified voice.
Having my group hold up while I investigated things, I walked over to the metro station entrance to see if it was locked. The second the metro's entrance appeared within my vision, I saw that the gate was indeed locked, although via a chain and a padlock.
I guess Roy Phillips and his group are living here. That's going to change how I'm going to approach clearing out this metro slightly.
Pretty sure that Roy Phillips and his group were inhabiting the Warrington Station, I returned to my group. "Alright, guys, change of plans. We're going to head over to the nearby Warrington Trainyard first and clear that out of any hostiles. When we've completely cleared the trainyard of all hostiles, we'll proceed into the metro tunnels next and clear out whatever hostiles we exist inside."
"That said, keep an eye while cleaning the place out, so you don't take out any sane ghouls if we encounter any by chance. I'd much rather not decrease the old world human population if I can help it."
"Sounds like a plan, Harold. I'll be sure to avoid dispatching any of my kind if we encounter any. But if they start attacking, that's going right out the window." Don responded, while Amata nodded her head.
"Of course." I acknowledged.
Upon finishing our brief conversation, we immediately moved over to the nearby Warrington Trainyard. And right as we were coming up on it, I scanned the area and saw that there were a number of feral ghouls residing within the railyard itself, as well as a few dotting the surrounding area of the place. Finding hostiles that needed eliminating already, I kept scanning the area for a couple more moments to see if I could spot any ghouls with intelligence amongst them and to note down the locations and numbers of the ferals.
Once I was finally sure there was no intelligent life among them, I informed my two companions of the situation. "We got a number of ferals up ahead and there don't appear to be any normal ghouls among them. But as I said previously, try not to kill any normal ghouls if we do end up encountering any while we're clearing the trainyard and the connected metro tunnels."
"I'll be sure to keep my eyes peeled." Amata replied seriously.
"Roger that." Don responded.
After receiving both Amata and Don's acknowledgment, I raised my gatling laser Purge, spooled its barrels, and took the lead again. Inching ever closer to the poor unaware bastards, I waited till we were close enough before I initiated the laser light show. That was followed shortly thereafter by numerous screeching feral ghouls, which came pouring out from all across the trainyard and the general surroundings towards our location.
Not letting up, my Amata and Don joined in, along with my robotic forces.
*Bzzzt-Bzzzt-Bzzzt-*
...
Half an hour from when I first initiated the battle, my squad and finished clearing the trainyard in its entirety and managed to kill off a total of 108 feral ghouls, which consisted of 79 regular Feral Ghouls, 24 Feral Ghoul Roamers, and 5 Feral Ghoul Reavers. Of those ghouls my companions, Amata and Don took out 17 normal ferals and 5 roamers, all of which I didn't earn a single point of experience from sadly. Other than the 100-plus feral ghouls we took care of, my robots found and dispatched 26 Radroaches as well as 5 Radscorpions that were hiding around the area.
"Good job, everyone. Now that we have removed all the ferals and other unwanted critters from the Warrington Trainyard, let's make our way into the metro tunnels next and start clearing it out." I told my group.
Receiving varied responses from my robots and a nod from Amata's power armor-covered head, Don piped up in an upbeat tone, appearing to be in a drastically improved mood compared to when I stuck him with his brothers in the manufacturing section. "Alright then, let's head on in." Don responded in an
Following our cleanup of the railyard, we pressed on over to one of the nearby metro tunnels that were currently being blocked by the large metal gates they were known to have in the games. When we reached them, I approached the maintenance door located on the right side of the train tunnel's entrance. Getting closer and closer to the door, it entered within range of my constantly improving and expanding perception field and, as soon as it did, I instantly noticed that the door was unlocked.
Aww, that's a bummer. I was kind of hoping that it would be locked, so I could earn a few extra experience points for myself.
Unfortunately, unable to obtain some easy exp, I neared the door whilst paying attention to what was entering my perception field from inside the metro's maintenance corridor. Not noticing anything that could be potentially dangerous or pose some sort of threat to me or those right on my six from within in the metro tunnel itself, including the corridor on the other side of the door, I opened the already unlocked door.
What came into view was a dark, relatively long poured concrete corridor in not too bad of shape for being as old as it was with all manner of pipes running jutting out from the grayish walls. Besides the solid state the corridor was in, there was a human skeleton wearing what appeared to be the remnants of a green military uniform lying on the floor of the corridor. And right next to the human skeleton was a standard R91 Assault Rifle, 5 30 Round R91 Assault Rifle Magazines, 156 5.56 rounds, and 3 Frag Grenades.
Focusing on the skeleton and the walls of the corridor a bit more, I noticed that the skull of the skeleton had a hole located at the top of its skull. The second I discovered that, I looked up above the skeleton and saw blotches of very old, dark red stains splatter across the ceiling.
Looks like the guy offed himself when the bombs were in the process of being dropped or had already detonated making the area outside uninhabitable... Honestly can't blame the guy, I probably would've done the same if I was in the same situation of being stuck inside a metro tunnel with no real way to survive and no future to look forward to.
Finished looking around the corridor, I stepped into it, relinquished the skeleton of its loot, and began slowly making my way deeper into the corridor, with the rest of my group trailing behind me except for my larger robots. Which consisted of Hauler, the Loading Bots, and my Sentry Bots, since they were too wide to fit through the maintenance corridor's doorway. Hence, I had them hold their position and secure the area around the tunnels' entrance while we went in to take over and handle business.
Pressing on without our heavy support, my group and I continued on into the dark and dreary hall until I arrived at the only way forward, that being another unlocked maintenance door. So with it being the only way to reach the interior, I extended my power armor-covered hand out, gave the door's handle a twist, and proceeded to crack it open and peek my head out to see what was further down the tunnel beyond the range of my senses.
Immediately upon sticking my head through the cracked opening, I saw a dark deteriorating metro tunnel that sloped down below surface level and split off further ahead into three different directions with two side-by-side tracks heading northeast likely passing by my facility and two side-by-side tracks going southwest probably passing through the Warrington Station terminal and platform. As for the last two side-by-side tracks, they went off to the south, heading out of the D.C. area leading to god knows where.
Other than that, I found that the tunnel was partially lit by what little sunlight managed to push its way through the gray clouded sky and through the metal gate blocking the tunnel itself. The metro tunnel was also lit up by the occasional industrial light that was somehow still functioning all these years later. Though a great majority of them weren't completely dim and weren't functioning any longer, unfortunately, so that will be another thing I'll have to replace somewhere down the line.
Other than replacing and fixing all the metro tunnel lights, I'm going to have to redo all the rails as well, because their current designs will certainly interfere with my larger robots' movements through the tunnels since they are above-ground rails. And since if I'm going to be redoing all the rails at some point and integrating them into the floors of the tunnels, I might as well expand the tunnels further and add additional space on both sides of the rails for my robots and vehicles to move throughout the tunnels unhindered. That will make it so they don't get in the way of the trains when they are doing their thing of moving back and forth on the rails.
Remaining cautious of the ever present dangers that existed here in the wasteland, I observed the metro tunnel for five seconds longer to see if anything would pop out and make an appearance. However, nothing did, hence I turned back and said. "There doesn't appear to be any ghouls within the tunnel, from what I can see, but there will probably be some further into the tunnel ahead, so let's get on in and clear the vermin out."
After receiving a variety of affirmations from everyone, I led the way and pushed into the tunnel, with those behind me following my lead closely. As I kept leading the way forward into the darkness of the metro tunnel, we kept descending further and further till we eventually reached the point in the tunnel where it split off into three different directions. And the moment we did, I checked the other two tunnels that didn't head for the Warrington Station. What I discovered from the initial survey was that the two tunnels were unfortunately blocked by cave-ins.
Haa, the tunnel that passes by my place is blocked. Of fucking course it is. I was really hoping they wouldn't be in such a state, but it is what it is. I suppose I'll be needing that extra robot production now.
Done checking out those two, I began heading off to check the only tunnel that hadn't collapsed and led to the Warrington Station and once I rounded the corner I saw a sizable swarm of feral ghouls spread throughout the dark metro tunnel.
With hostiles to dispatch in sight, I turned back towards and waved for both Amata and Don to come near and right as they did; I relayed to them in a hushed voice that wouldn't be detected by the ferals that laid further ahead. "Okay, we got feral ghouls up ahead to clear. Time to get to work."
Having made them aware of what was right ahead of us, I took the frontmost position as per usual. As soon as we were set up and ready to take them out, I began the slaughter by letting loose a lengthy spray of laser fire courtesy of my gatling laser Purge. That burst of mine was then followed up by Amata's, Don's, and the rest of our forces' laser fire, as well as a plethora of Feral Ghoul screeching that echoed across the tunnel.
*Brrrrrrzt-Brrrzt-Brrrrrzt-*
*Bzzt-Bzzt-Bzzt-*
*eh-HAA-eh-HAA-eh-HAA-*
While the ferals in this section of the tunnel began charging toward our location, we culled their numbers and kept doing so as the seconds passed by. After my group and I spent the last two minutes sending out a huge amount of laser fire, we finally finished slaughtering the rest of the remaining ghouls that came charging at us. And of that group of ghouls, my robots and I killed off 93 Feral Ghouls, 21 Feral Ghoul Roamers, and 3 Feral Ghoul Reavers.
Now that we finished eliminating that group from the wasteland, all of us continued forward in our spread-out formation in case we came across another horde of brainless, aggressive zombies. Shortly thereafter, we ran into another group of ferals further down the metro tunnel that immediately spotted us.
The instant the first feral let out a screech, we restarted the laser light show again and shredded that ghoul's head as another wave of enemies came storming at us.
...
This fight took us slightly more than 3 minutes to clear this group of ferals due to their numbers being larger than the last. On top of there being a couple of trains in the way that provided cover for them as they closed the distance between us and them. As for the number of ghouls that my robots were able to kill off from that group, we were able to bag 137 regular ghouls, 38 roamers, and 7 reavers.
Seeing that we had killed the last of them off, I had everyone perform a quick check on their equipment to ensure that there were no issues. As soon as everyone had made sure that all of their equipment was in perfect functioning order, we continued onward cautiously into the depths whilst remaining in our formation in preparation for any more feral ghoul encounters.
On our journey to the Warrington Station, we came in contact with yet another 3 feral ghoul groups, all of which we quickly dispatched with ruthless efficiency. When we finally got done dealing with the last of them, my robots and I managed to slaughter 305 Feral Ghouls, 133 Feral Ghoul Roamers, and 18 Feral Ghoul Reavers netting me a shit ton of exp.
______
Reminder, I'm working on 3 different webnovels right now, so I'll be using power stones, comments, and other such things to gauge what people want me to be working on. Meaning, whichever work is getting the most support through those means is probably the one most of my free time will be focused on.
Also, I posted all the auxiliary information up on Patreon, so if you've been wanting to look up what certain perks do again, for instance, you can find all the information over there without having to go through a bazillion chapters looking for certain perks effects.