Chapter Twenty-Three
"Infiltrating the base at Hanscom isn't an option," Russell said wearily. "I thought it was, but when I looked at their defenses – that place is locked up way tighter than Navarro ever was."
"I guess it makes sense," Hidalgo mused. "Back in the 40s, they thought nothing in the wasteland, none of us 'mutants', stood a chance to them. But now … now the Enclave know they can lose."
"Why not try and do what the Chosen One did?" Meyers asked.
"I have a feeling lightning doesn't strike twice," Russell replied. "From what the Remnants hinted at, they were sloppy back in those days at that. Like Hidalgo said, back then they didn't think they could possibly lose. Now, whatever they're aiming to do, they know that they can be beaten, know that they can be outfought or infiltrated. That's why the air base was so well defended."
"But where did they get all the material?" Jones asked. "For that kind of perimeter …"
"They're using a pre-War facility," Meyers commented. "I found an old highway map in the ruins of a coolant station. It was in the glovebox of an Old World car, nice and tight – that kept it safe from crumbling into mulch. It gave us every major landmark in the region – all the old highway checkpoints too. The rest of the construction, what they didn't simply refurbish, they'd have shipped in by air from the south or gathered materials locally."
"Are there any allies we can get in touch with? There has to be some kind of resistance already!" Jones said.
Ranger Casey nodded.
"We think there's a potential division in that militia that they're using as auxiliaries. I was in Brockton and I noted far from everybody trusts the Enclave to make good on their promises there. As well, there're rumors about something called the Railroad, and something even more in the shadows called the Institute."
"But," Meyers said. "I don't trust the Institute aren't Enclave themselves. They're in some sort of secret location kidnapping people for God knows what reason … replacing them with robots's more subtle than packing them in vertibirds, but everything connects … can we imagine that the Enclave wants to subdue a branch of its organization that isn't playing ball and to get access to some missing link in the tech, something that can help them pull off another world genocide? Maybe this is all stalling time until they get access to the FEV here, find somewhere convenient to disperse it and-"
"We don't know," Hidalgo said. "But the Enclave's clearly out to use this region in the long term. They're even putting out ads on their radio urging wastelanders to join their army."
"Cannon fodder," Meyers commented, to nods from everybody. "They're scared to risk their own hides."
"I saw smoke rising from the factory at Lexington," Russell commented. "And during my trek back I passed some caravaneers complaining about tolls the Enclave checkpoints were exacting, and word of factories and mines in operation in the northeast. They want to be exploiting this place, not exterminating it, so far as I can tell."
"Did you get into Lexington?" Meyers anxiously asked.
"No," Russell said. "The Enclave have checkpoints on all the roads leading in, closed completely at night. I looked into the base from the elevated highway to the south, at an intersection – the north-south highway, I saw signs calling it I-95, blocked my view of the town itself and I didn't want to get any closer."
"How many places have the Enclave taken over?" Hidalgo asked. "You've gone the farthest north of all of us."
"So far as I can tell," Russell commented. "It's not so simple as lines on a map, it's a sphere of influence that thins out as you move away from the core. It's like when we were in the Mojave. Their presence is strongest round Hanscom and the three towns surrounding it. Then they have outposts scattered all over, and patrols regularly moving between them. There're two fortified towns called Covenant and Diamond City, they seem to have ignored the first one. Then there's a Vault, number 81, that's joined with them completely and a scattering of smaller towns and farms around the city that help supply them with food. They don't seem to care that much about some place called Goodneighbor, that's downtown. A lot of places are affiliated with them, but only by default – I'm sure they'd turn against them if given a reason to."
"Then give them a reason to!" Meyers cried out. "We know the truth of what happened, we ought to tell it to them! Talk about how they're the monsters that destroyed the world once and tried to do it again to finish the job!"
Jones nodded.
"Calm," Hidalgo said. "If we just do that … how do we get the word out? Word of mouth, go doorstep to doorstep handing out pamphlets? They're telling the people that what we'll be saying – the truth – is just our propaganda, our deceitful rebellious slander against 'the lawful government of the United States'. And by doing that … we paint a target on our backs. If they hear that people are telling the truth about what they did on the West Coast, in the Core Region …"
"Then they know people from there are around here," Russell finished Hidalgo's sentence quite without meaning to. "They have somebody to look for."
"So, what's our next step?" Meyers asked frustratedly.
"We need to look for allies," Russell said. "On our own, we can put a dent in the Enclave's presence here. But if we can get locals – any locals – to support us, we can do a lot more."
There were nods at that.
"I'll be investigating the Enclave's agenda in Lexington and Diamond City," Russell continued. "Meanwhile, you try outreach. Don't be blatant about our purpose or origin, just fish for dissent and try and get in contact."
==*==
Loud, blaring music split the frosty midmorning air as a group of three vertibirds circled lazily through it, round the old Massachusetts National Guard Training Yard. The facility's command HQ stood out next to the armory, surrounded by several barracks buildings made of rotting wood and an unpowered, rusted electric fence broken in a dozen places. The suburbia that had once surrounded it had retreated in the post-nuclear devastation, reclaimed by nature into wilderness spotted with scattered homesteads and hamlets. It would have been picked clean decades ago if not for what was inside. Not that Mike Schultz particularly cared about that fact, as he gritted his teeth and waited for the ferals inside to take the bait. This was barely even Army work, but he guessed the locals here were so useless – rads must have rotted their brains almost as bad as ghouls' – that they hadn't been able to clear out the ferals everywhere. It wasn't war, it was pest control he was doing, and it made him feel dirty.
Any second now – the gal behind him was blaring Wagner, chick thought she was so sophisticated. Most of the time using their attack sirens they just blared them a second or two, gave the raiders a moment to piss themselves before the missiles and lasers started flying. But here – they were baiting out the hundreds of ferals here into a kill-zone. Sooner or later they'd wake up …
The beasts in human shape poured out of the National Guard facility, must be hundreds down there, a tidal wave of filthy mutated human flesh that didn't just come out of the main command post with its attached helipad, but the barracks area and the armory too. They fell over themselves as they rushed out of the building, smashed windows and broke down doors, looking for prey, for animals or men to rip and bite and eat and eat until their stomachs burst. Some were completely naked, others had rags of military and civilian clothing loosely hanging or fused to their skin. It didn't matter to Flight Captain Schultz. He moved away and loosed a napalm missile – thanks to the fracking starting to begin in PA – at the creatures, along with two others from the other 'birds. They detonated airburst, standard protocol.
Schultz saw the whole grisly spectacle in high-def through his plane's video screens. It was wonderful what tech could do – despite the redundancy of the vision slits with their laserproofed transparent ceramic armor, this plane's canopy could technically be fully covered in duraframe and he wouldn't miss a thing. In an instant the beasts flashed into fire. Snow became steam instantly, not even bothering to melt first, mixing with the black smoke of the napalm. Some of the beasts still wandered about, bellowing uncannily human-like cries of pain, their regeneration keeping them impossibly alive. The door gunner fired into the scattering mob, slicing into others with the gatling laser mounted in the plane's side port, mowing down stragglers and stray groups. Some crawled forwards even while cut in half, or mewled pathetically on the ground with all four limbs gone. They'd be cleaned up later.
It was like raiders or muties, but the enemy didn't even have the option of firing back. Not even like ferals are worth calling an enemy, he thought. He switched to infrared to cut through the black smoke that was still rising from the dying fires, checked it out. The only bright spots were patches of flame.
"Papa Eagle, this is a confirmed success, all hostiles KIA, over," he signalled to HQ.
"Okay, you are clear to proceed to the next phase, over."
They landed in a clearing several hundred feet away from the training yard, and the teams deployed out from the 'birds. The laser turrets – not real SHORAD stuff, just obsolete pre-War security equipment – on the roofs had been taken out on approach by the birds, sniped by their forward gatling lasers. Schultz remembered when he was in his teens, almost through with his childhood basic and due to enter service, Mom and Dad fighting side-by-side in DC, the US military used more sentry turrets than real guards to protect bases. Autumn had ended that when they'd started recruiting those wasters into the military – sentry turrets couldn't shoot for shit, could be hacked or pulsed into uselessness, and most of all lacked flexibility. They couldn't give orders to halt, couldn't fire warning shots, couldn't signal backup or give reports to higher authority, and couldn't move to detain trespassers.
Anyway, there might be other threats in the area, so three fireteams of Army infantry and a group of combat engineers were going to move in. They went out from the 'birds while Schultz drank coffee – imported from some region in the far south called Costa Cafeinada – out of a thermal flask he kept for situations like this. The force returned at 1200 hours – there had been some stray ferals inside the building, but most importantly a sentry bot they'd sent the proper deactivation codes for and had flagged for pickup. A transport VB was going to fly in from Hanscom in some hours more, take everything that wasn't nailed down – and some that was – and bring it to the Quartermaster Corps for assessment.
Then another team would come, assess habitability and ease of restoration, and after all that effort it'd be handed over to the fucking locals. Just my job.
==*==
John Miles did not like his job. There were only three teachers in the Calvin Coolidge Lexington Elementary School, and he was one of them. He hadn't imagined that he'd find himself thrown into a job teaching the sons and daughters of brainless wasteland yokels, trying to shape them into American patriots, but he'd been injured in the push on Fort Independence – Brotherhood of Steal remnants who hadn't fled like rats with their leader – and the cybernetic replacement for his lost hand hadn't taken. Nerve damage, they said. An honorable discharge later, he'd found education to be his best new career option – but they hadn't told him he would be going here in ten years.
He looked over the kids in front of him – trying to look smart in their uniforms, a navy blue version of military cadet fatigues, skirts for the girls and pants for the boys. Some already had their medals pinned for good behavior, insight in class, or high marks on assignments – they weren't totally hopeless, God he'd heard some horror stories from colleagues in the residential schools. He flipped the projector from its geography class display – a map of the US, a black stain covering almost every part of the country. That was what the US military and government was working to clean up, the lawlessness and savagery that dominated the wasteland. It went on to the tense example sentences –
THE LAWFUL GOVERNMENT WILL RESTORE THE NATION
I'M GOING TO BE A SOLDIER WHEN I GROW UP
The last one was the subject of today's lesson.
"The future tense," he began, going off his notes. "Is used most commonly in these two basic ways. The first is referred to as the simple future while we know the second as the 'going-to' future …"
The lesson dragged on as the kids wrote down endless copies and permutations of future tense sentences, lasting about an hour. He kept an eye on them, trying to catch any glimpse of bad behavior. Any unrest and he'd give the little bastards the cane. At their age, he'd been crawling prone through mud under barbed wire – as it was, there was weapons practice scheduled after this lesson, a mix of drill and field maintenance with unloaded laser rifles permanently locked on safety condition.
==*==
Of all the places he'd been during the war for the Capital Wasteland, Colonel Walker remembered Adams AFB the best. It'd been where he deployed from as a solo agent to fix problems that the government needed to be fixed, and he knew it like the back of his hand.
It'd been expanded by now, improved, redeveloped. Adams AFB was now a sprawling logistical hub responsible for resupplying and supporting government operations from Florida to Massachusetts, maintaining connections between the industrial facilities in the reclaimed territory and the military operations much further afield.
It was no surprise when he saw a familiar face in the bar – a shock of black hair he'd recognize anywhere. Major DeLoria, with a unit patch showing a green snake twined around a yellow "101" on a Vault-blue field. The man saluted with all due haste, but he could tell Butch was surprised by him outranking him. My old rival, my old friend … it's sure been a while.
"How're things on the promotion, sir?" Butch asked. "Good?"
"Good," he replied. "My pay's been bumped up, but of course it means more work. I heard they may be expanding your unit to a full regimental status too."
"They sure could be," Butch said. "I heard Brass're thinking they want to see what an all Vaulter regiment can do, they've got a training company up in New England, one in Florida, and eking out a third from Vaults across the country. We'll show the rebels that Tunnel Snakes rule, just like we did at Jefferson. What've you been up to?"
"By the way, is Wally still married to that good-time-girl?"
"Yeah, I dunno how. Redhead you know, you think she'd be a real share crop. So, what're you doing here?"
There were only two words Walker could say, two words that seemed to chill the air in the room as he said them.
"It's classified."
==*==
Norfolk Naval Station, even in its dilapidated and damaged state, represented the largest US naval facility in existence. Autumn looked over the USS Richardson, back in her drydock, as Admiral Keller walked up to him to give a final status report. Soon they would be sailing east, with a company of US Marines and a full complement of fighters and vertibirds. He took a deep breath. Richardson and Eden hadn't been really devoted to restoring the nation, but in their vision of some kind of purified, perfected humanity. They would have thrown America aside for their fantasy of a genetically perfect mankind, a new start to human history unburdened by what had been.
There had been top-level discussions last year about a European expedition, with the Joint Chiefs and with State. The European Commonwealth's fall hadn't come with the speed of thousands of flying nuclear missiles, but had been slow and agonizing and painful. "Humanitarian interventions" had begun in the mid-2050s, ostensibly for providing aid but actually intended to take every last remaining drop of oil that could be wrung out from the ruins of the UAR. Followed by invasions of Libya, Algeria, Morocco in a bid to control more oil reserves, the occupation faced an open ended insurgency of Arab nationalists and Islamists that millions of men had been devoted to fighting. The EC had refused to join WW3 when China invaded Alaska as its military was dedicated to the war in the middle east, marking the end of NATO. A stab in the back from people America had saved from the Nazis and Communists.
Unrest had risen as European oil reserves kept faltering, overtaxed nuclear plants melting down or even exploding. Brownouts were followed by rolling blackouts, then by permanent blackouts in areas deemed non-critical. The propaganda at the time justified it as environmental protection, but nobody brought that. There were limits to how much bullshit even the masses could be made to swallow. Then the final straw that broke the camel's back – the Commonwealth government in Brussels proposed a constitutional measure in the form of a new treaty to sideline the national governments, already subordinate to the Commonwealth one, in favor of new regional ones in a parallel system. When it was rejected in national referendums, they brought it forward again in months, this time earning clear supermajorities somehow. Protests turned to riots turned to terrorism, secessionist governments rose up, the army in the Middle East was called back to deal with the unrest at home and the power grid collapsed.
Nationalists, fascists, communists, Islamists, every damn kind of -ist had been fighting as the EC tore itself apart.
But whatever new nations had arose were important. Not just as a source of raw materials, but recognition of the US government as the US government by foreign nations would damage the rebels' claim to any kind of legitimacy. That was why USS Richardson was now going out to support Britain, instead of staying in New England. A strategic move, not a tactical one.
Even though he knew that, Autumn couldn't help but feel there was something he was trading off with this.
==*==
The air was musty as Nate walked forward into the cellar of the RobCo building. His armor's thermal vision made the dark chamber plain as day as he moved, watching the shadow. The robots hadn't left through here, plainly – there must be another entrance somewhere to the complex. Ahead was a scanner set into what looked like a plain enough wall – Nate took the robobrain's head out from his combat webbing and held it up to it.
Wordlessly, without any light show or motion, data packets and clearance codes were exchanged over the span of milliseconds. The electronic key turned in its lock, and the facility opened up. The false wall slid down into the floor, followed quickly by a series of bulkheads and electronic doors opening up one after the other in succession. The whole sequence lasted a minute, and for a moment he thought he'd be stuck waiting for hours while the facility opened up. But it did, and he made his way in cautiously through the doorway. That thing could have taken a nuclear blast point blank, he mused. Ada moved behind him as he muttered under his breath.
"Open sesame," he said too low for any but himself to hear as he moved through what looked like a security area – a standard search, decon and check-in facility common across America. Sirens blared and red lights flashed continuously, the signs of a lockdown that hadn't ended for two hundred years. On the far side, through bulletproof glass windows, he looked in at a cavernous chamber. Automated conveyor belts and shipping rails moved half-complete robots and parts across a massive factory floor. It was worn down – several of the machines were clearly no longer working, lack of power or maintenance having done them in – but still partially functional. Makes sense too they'd go for heavy automation, keep everything as need-to-know as possible. He felt grim as he headed in – this hadn't been just a factory, it'd been a place of execution.
The rooms spiralled down, snaking round the cavernous factory chamber. Nate pressed on as robots rose up from false walls and hidden trapdoors, swooping in on the attack – he noted they were the scrap-built robots the Mechanist had developed. The guy had taken control of the auto-defenses too – not just the laser turrets, but the robotic patrols. He was glad he hadn't taken any Minutemen in with him – not only was this facility's very existence classified, it would eat those poor farm boys alive.
Danse was holding the fort at Independence, keeping an eye out there. He wished the man was there with them, but the people at Independence needed him to give them some half-decent tactical concepts suited for modern warfare. So much, it seemed, depended right now on so few people – not just in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, but across the wider United States, with Autumn and the government that, while it must look big and imposing to any Podunk wasteland boy or girl, was skeletal and threadbare compared to its height before the atomic war.
-*-
Elliott Tercorien took a deep breath as the v-bird touched home base back at the pre-War airport. General Ward's flight had gone straight back to Hanscom, where he was meeting with Federal officials of some kind. But for him, it was right back to another op. Another day, another mission, he mused. It would be rough – US soldiers were expected, with the help of various combat chems, to fight up for 72 hours without rest, and he'd managed to nap a bare few hours after turning back on the lights at the Atlantic Oil Rig. But still, there was probably a note being made in his file right now of how he'd handled the situation with those mutants – he could consider any chances of further promotion gone at least for a year, and he may not be able to make officer. But it had been the most effective way to resolve the situation.
The LT, Lieutenant Callista Disney, was in a sour mood when they both landed, on separate planes, at the airfield – he could tell from her face, as she got out of armor, that she was in a poor mood to give a briefing the details of which she'd only just received.
"You're to move out immediately," she said, her breath frosting in the crisp air of the outdoor airfield. Elliott would have liked to move to the remains of the pre-War terminal buildings that were being requisitioned as additional barracks and administrative facilities – there'd been a hive of ferals in the basement that had just recently been cleared out with fire and plasma – but they'd said there was no time. "Target is the RobCo Sales and Service facility nearby. It had been marked as low priority, but we received signs of activity and believe it's the source of the robotic forces that're threatening the locals and harassing our patrol teams."
"Are we to clear the place out, ma'am?" Elliott asked. "Full scale sweep, no survivors?"
"No," Lt. Disney replied. "Your squad is ordered to take those involved into custody if at all possible, as the scientific team at Hanscom believes them to be potential assets for interrogation – including the use of enhanced measures as necessary – or potential co-option."
"Understood, ma'am."
"I'll have the full tactical data uploaded to your PipBoy ASAP, then you can lead your men in."
"Understood, ma'am."
He was worried himself. The Marines had barely rested and now his men were to deploy – in only squad strength – immediately after arriving home? There'd be pissed for sure. But still, ours but to do and die he mused. Mission command doctrine – he'd read in the field manuals that it emulated the most effective and adaptable forces in history, the Wehrmacht and the IDF, and it was certainly different from the attrition-based, inflexible mindset he'd encountered fighting in the Great War – left room in how to carry out an order, but gave no space to refuse one outright.
He didn't let that show on his face though. Officers and NCOs set examples for the men under them – a leader couldn't show indecision or weakness, even if he had those feelings personally. He had to push them on.
-*-
Nate pushed on through the brackish water, knee-deep and glimmering with the rainbow colors of industrial runoff, as he moved forward. It was a wonder the facility was even still there – hadn't flooded completely in its centuries of dilapidation. But the subsidiary reactors must still be running, powering centuries-old pumps. In America, they built things to last … or at least had before the bombs fell. The scavengers living in the ruins of that world now were so focused just on surviving for each day to think of any sort of future.
He clambered up a set of metal stairways which creaked and groaned under his every step, knowing that at any moment the supports might give way and the way forward – this way at least would be blocked for good. The glare of alarm lights and banshee wail of sirens had faded into the background for him some hours ago, just like the sound of artillery had in his dugout when he'd been on the Anchorage Front. High up in those mountains, avalanches had swept whole combat outposts aside, and it was common practice to fire arty up on the peaks to trigger them.
Civilians always thought war was non-stop action and drama, like it was in the movies, but they'd never been right. Up to ninety percent of warfare was, and always had been – war never changes, he thought, bringing up that old cynical frontline saying – waiting. At least now he was doing something.
He got onto the more stable catwalk up top, pressed the button to bring the cargo loader to his side of the room. The mechanisms creaked and groaned into life as Ada moved up the catwalk behind, Jezebel's braincase sloshing in its nest of combat webbing. I could still easily double-cross the bitch … what the hell does she think she's gonna do when this is over? But still – he tried to be a good man, even when things seemed to indicate otherwise. He had his honor as a soldier to think about. He got on the platform and waited as it moved forward, ancient systems creaking and groaning.
He got off when it reached the other side and went into an elevator – it sent him down one or two storeys, into a concrete passageway. There was something new here – a system of metal rails on the floor, and a trolley attached to it. On the trolley was a feral ghoul – unmistakeable – with the top of its head sliced open. He took a deep breath and moved on forward through another heavy metal door into … a cell block. The walls were lined with thick steel security doors, each having a number written on them.
He took a deep breath. He'd heard from Whitley what this facility had been engaged in … executing death penalty criminals and using their brains as CPUs for robobrains. They were going to die no matter what, but it would've been better to give them a clean death, not use them as spare robot parts. And he guessed the Mechanist was carrying on the process, using the radiation-rotted brains of ferals. How long before he decides to start using people?
It was an ugly question, and as he moved through the passages of the hospital wing – the sterile flooring dirty after centuries of abandonment, strapped-down rail trolleys lying about, some thrown off by some great force – he began to gusss the path he'd taken. He'd gone down and in a loop underground, travelling round the automated factory chamber, so the control center should be ... several storeys straight below the entrance. He moved on through the lifeless halls – skeletons lying on some pads, others with ferals and even a glowing ghoul on one – until he reached the command center entrance. This was it, the Mechanist would surely be here.
"Here goes nothing," he said, as he held Jezebel's braincase up.
The door opened with flickering lights and the whirring noises of long-dead servos, and he stepped into the darkness beyond.
