Fayth's Litter

Draco's ship had four construction drones on it. Of the four, three remain; the fourth was destroyed (killed?) by the Pershings when they found Draco's hidden vessel. The skinhead goons discovered its location because the large autonomous drones had been left unattended out in the woods after they had covered the ship and Draco had left.

While Fayth had an inkling of a notion that the drones behaved strangely around her, she didn't realize the care and feeding of them would fall to her. When she saw the damaged drone playing whack-a-mole with the Pershings trapped in Draco's ship--seemingly trying to exact vengeance against those who had taken one of them down--Fayth felt a bond form. Once the Pershings were dealt with, she nursed the damaged one back to health, and gave them a new home. Their pen is currently the hangar bay in Bunker November.

Since Fayth has befriended Brock (he is almost a simple animal, himself!), he has taken a shine to the big, dopey drones Fayth has taken under her wing. He spends some of his free time each day hanging out with them in the pen. He has taken to teaching them to play soccer, and now that he has a new suit of full-body armor, he has stepped up to rugby. Once he lands in the hospital, he will probably step it back down to soccer. Or he might not. Brock is not the sharpest tool in the shed, sometimes.

After the team's second trip to Seattle (Recruitment Drive, parts I, II & III), Fayth needed to de-stress for a bit, so she looked to the solace of her litter, quiet and unassuming. They would not burden her with more worries. They love her. During this visit, she relaxed, playing soccer with them as Brock does. She also learned they now had names. Brock had stenciled one on each of them: Thunder, Flash and Alamo.

Thunder and Flash's names are stenciled on their hulls. Alamo's name is stenciled on his massive right foreleg; this is the one that was blown off by a Pershing anti-tank rocket, and the one salvaged from their fallen brother and replaced by Fayth.

For being so large and menacing, Thunder, Flash and Alamo are all surprisingly agile and...gentle. Unless you make them mad. If there is any hierarchy among them, Alamo seems to be the leader. He is more curious, and the cause of most things being slowly removed from the hangar because he tends to tinker. Alamo has also figured out how to open the man-door on the south wall of the hangar. Sometimes he will spend hours with the door open just watching the base personnel carry on with their duties as he is too big to fit through the door. Several of the eggheads and Rangers have begun to see Alamo as their mascot, and will go out of their way to take the long way through the catwalks to pass by the hangar and say hi.

When no one is around, the drones do interact with each other. They pace around, tussle and bat at each other. They kick the soccer balls around, and they surprisingly spend a lot of time...napping, for lack of a better term. They will take turns squatting down in pairs in a dark corner of the pen. At no time are all three of them "asleep." They seem to have a shift-system figured out, and one of them will always pace around nearby while the other two are inactive. For giant robots, the three of them together can be almost sickeningly endearing.

New Developments

The Litter definitely have lives of their own independent of Fayth; they do things when she is not watching, and some of these had gone unnoticed by her for months. Fayth has recently become aware of the fact that her Bois attend church services on Sundays (which are held in the hangar bay where they live), and that after Operation Repo, they were offered to be baptized by Father Oslander, the unconventional priest who comes to the bunker weekly to conduct services. After this, they were all given a religious pendant by Corporal Rabinowicz, which is why Alamo was so despondent when he was killed, leading everyone to believe that he was injured when his true affliction was sadness and depression.

The cure for Alamo's troubles was discovered by Sergeant Carville, of all people. He recognized Alamo's particular brand of injury and was able to take a step toward fixing it by arranging a ceremony involving Alamo, his brothers, Brock and their Momma, Fayth. They were able to go out to the woods where the chassis of their fallen brother was buried and reinterred him next to Rabbit, where the drones could visit him. This also culminated in Carville revealing to Fayth that all the drones called their fallen member "Alamo," and that the machine everyone else though of as Alamo was simply holding the torch, as it were. With Alamo finally put to rest, he asked his mother for a name of his own. After giving it some thought, Fayth decided to name her boy "Omaha."

Fayth has also found out that at least Omaha understands ASL, so he can "speak" to Carville. This also seems to prove there is a certain amount of sentience about them. With recent events at the Wilson Farm with mutant attacks and Fayth's mother being inexplicably pregnant, it is clear she needs more protection than her dad can provide, and the litter might need a break from the bunker. Fayth relocated them to her parent's farm, and they have bonded to her mother strongly.