Chapter 6
The cold snow fell on the ground, and the little blackbird on the tree branch took in that entire white panorama. The great factory before it, a triumph of pre-War ingenuity and industry, had started producing again this morning for the first time in more than two hundred years. Iron ore from Dunwich, turned into steel at the Saugus Ironworks, was now being transported by riverboat and truck to Lexington to be made into machinery and vehicles of all sorts.
The bird’s beady eye fell over everything in its view – the power-armoured soldiers at strategic points around the factory, the throngs of workers entering the great steel temple of industry, and last but not least the array of artillery pieces, anti-air guns, and military equipment in the base nearby. It saw, and relayed and transmitted everything to its masters deep underground.
==*==
Elder Sarah Lyons of the Brotherhood of Steel looked out across Omaha, the defacto capital of the Brotherhood’s territory, and couldn’t resist a tear. Today was the ninth anniversary of her father, Owen Lyons’ death. The expedition to the Capital Wasteland had started so well – discovering caches of tech across the ruined city – but had quickly turned sour. First had been the super mutants, a seemingly-endless horde of degenerated subhumans that had bogged them down in Downtown D.C. Then there’d been the Enclave. They’d swooped in to steal the Purifier and the Brotherhood had striven to reclaim it. But they had failed. The plan relied on Liberty Prime – a pre-War military robot of unimaginable destructive power – but Madison Li, one of the Project Purity scientists who was the only one with a shot at cracking the problem, had fled far to the north with the Enclave’s takeover, ranting about how she’d been betrayed and couldn’t trust anyone.
So thcey had tried anyway – and it had gone badly. Facing the teeth of Enclave guns, the Brotherhood lost many brave men and women – it had not gone like Navarro where the elder Lyons had fought before. Desperate, they had evacuated the Citadel without even time to lay charges, joining up with Casdin’s outcasts in the panicked flight back westwards. And on the way, Owyn, too old to handle the journey, had died. They had raised a cairn over his body before crossing the Mississippi, and in the trackless reaches of America’s ruins Sarah had no idea where it was.
How are the people of the Wasteland doing? she mused.
Killed with FEV? Enslaved? In truth she had no idea. But at least the people of the western Great Plains and the Rockies were safe under Brotheerhood rule. Safe as they could be, considering the circumstances. Only seven years ago the Brotherhood had been on the edge of survival. A vast horde had moved in from the southwest, called Caesar’s Legion. After taking Denver, they moved in to sack Boulder and the Brotherhood had responded. But with only a few they were able to deploy in time against the Legion’s screaming hordes, they would have lost for sure. And a loss would have been a major defeat - especially as the General of Brotherhood forces in the Midwest was among the troops at that battle.
Luckily, Sarah had managed to repair the very airship that had taken the Brotherhood east and deployed it against the Legion. Faced with fire from above, the primitives’ morale had shattered and they had routed. The Brotherhood squads faced up against them found them easy work after that.
Now, she heard, Caesar was dead – killed in battle in Nevada – and without his presence his Legion was falling apart. Gaius Magnus had the largest splinter, in Two-Sun, but even he may be dead already right now.
She looked to the west, at the airship boarding tower at the edge of town. The Brotherhood, having recently discovered a number of air force bases in Montana, now had a small armada of ten airships and rising. It made her proud. Elder Diomedes from the Montana Bunker was arriving here – part of the big annual meetup – along with Paladin Maxson from the outpost in Des Moines and Brotherhood leaders from bunkers across the midwest.
Wonder if he still has that crush on me, Sarah mused, then suppressed the thought. She was already married, with a son.
The decisions to be made here would shape the future of the Wasteland for years to come.
==*==
Daniel Baker listened to the radio as the news droned on.
“Colonel James R. Fairfax was sworn in today as provisional military governor of New Jersey, after Atlantic City, colloquially called by the culturally degraded term “Great Lanta”, peacefully accepted the US Government offer of reintegration as months-long negotiations dragged to a close. In other news, US Armed Forces operations in Boston continue to go swimmingly as raiders, super mutants and feral ghouls fall to the overwhelming might of our armed forces. And now some music...”
Yes we'll rally round the flag, boys, we'll rally once again,
Shouting the battle cry of freedom,
We will rally from the hillside, we'll gather from the plain,
Shouting the battle cry of freedom! ...
As it turned out, Boston was his destination also. He had a government contract for delivering food to their soldiers, and he’d sure as Hell not want to be found in breach of it. This wasn’t as short and sweet as the typical runs he’d done going from Philly to the Capital Wasteland (he still thought of it as that, no matter what the government bean-counters said) back in the day. But it was a Hell of a lot more profitable, that was for sure. Money he’d racked up (that green paper still felt odd seven years on from the first time he’d seen ‘em) been so much he’d brought an Old World (they insisted on the term ‘Pre-War’ for reasons unclear to him) truck and sold his Brahmin to a farmer, and soon he’d have to think about hiring others to do work for him. Business was booming with the raiders gone and the roads unquestionable safe.
He briefly looked to the side and looked at their dead bodies. The Rattlesnake Gang, once the most feared in Delaware and Pennsylvania. Now nothing more than a bunch of skeletons, put on display by the roadside to strike fear into anyone who felt the urge to take up a similar lifestyle. Whether they had been left in those cages to die or executed by other means and set up like that he didn’t know, and didn’t want to enquire.
He wasn’t sure what to think of the news around Great Lanta. Once he’d been up there, on the way to the Big NY and the scorched skeletons of a hundred skyscrapers. More than a hundred sailing ships and steamers he’d seen in the harbour, travelling to and from New Orleans, Ronto, Havana and even Nueva-Maya down in the furthest south. And there were the vast crowds of pilgrims outside the Basilica of Saint Monica, a large brick building home to the
de facto head of the Catholic church on the East Coast and the tomb of the great holy woman herself. He wasn’t much of a prayin’ man himself, but right now he was in the mind to. It was dangerous going to the Commonwealth, and even secure as he was in the truck he felt ill at ease with it. But the US Armed Forces needed to be fed, and he had a contract to supply them.
==*==
Arcade Gannon looked down from above at the ruins below him. The husks of skyscrapers stood below him, and the glowing craters of nuclear ground bursts were scattered unevenly across Manhattan and Brooklyn, visible even by night. The only building with lights on was the Empire State – apparently the location of a vertibird landing pad – and several on an island near the Statue of Liberty, still miraculously intact. They looked like recent construction, prefabbed. Arcade guessed they represented an Enclave outpost like in Chicago.
“I hope you get a good word in with the military governor,” one of the soldiers escorting him muttered. “You need his support to get your agency started.”
“Military governor?” he asked.
“Yeah,” the soldier replied. “Above the local level, it has been determined that the extreme state of emergency necessitates direct military rule at the State and Commonwealth levels until a basis for civil democratic governance has been fully restored in the US State or Commonwealth in question. At least, that’s the official policy document.”
“So when will this ‘direct military rule’ end?”
“Can’t say,” the soldier said. “I’m not one of the politicos in Raven Rock or Pentagon brass. I heard you’re an idealist, but ideals won’t cut it by themselves. Sometimes you have to compromise with the world around you, because the facts on the ground won’t change if you wish hard enough. Every soldier knows that.”
“I never was a soldier,” Arcade said. “Perhaps I’ll never understand.”
“You will,” he replied. “One day, you will.”
Arcade wasn’t sure if that day would ever come.
==*==
REPORT: SITES OF INTEREST IN “GLOWING SEA” OPERATIONS THEATRE
From: Valerie Danvers, US Army Data Analyst
To: Colonel Daniel Bradley, Provisional Military Governor of Massachusetts
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: The times that try men’s souls are the fire that forges them anew.
Given its extreme radioactivity, the Grade Alpha nuclear detonation site Z-7642 (known locally as “The Glowing Sea”) poses no small hazard to our efforts here in Boston. The location (devastated beyond any other area on record) is according to local sources home to nothing but feral ghouls, deathclaws, and a radiation cult (which we believe is the same one that left when we relocated the township of Megaton) apparently turned militant. Reports from our scientific staff even indicate that a full cleanup (without use of the G.E.C.K. Mk. 2 technology, which we lost the knowledge to engineer with our failed attempt to revive the great scientist Stanislaus Braun) would take upwards of 50 years at a conservative estimate.
However, as if to taunt us, a highly important strategic site is located deep within the Glowing Sea.
SENTINEL SITE PRESCOTT
An old ICBM silo, relatively undamaged and not activated during the exchange of 2077, able to fire tactical and strategic-level nuclear missiles at targets as far away as East Asia. America will once more have a nuclear deterrent, and deployment of such weapons, whether on military or civilian targets, could be useful in forcing the surrender of traitorous “New California” or other groups – if that level of warfare proves to be necessary.
My personal recommendation in securing these sites and for cleaning up the Glowing Sea is to use individuals suffering from radiation-induced regenerative necrosis along with penal labour (once we have re-established a functioning corrections system, of course).
Current issues with suppressing bandits, super mutants and feral ghouls regrettably force us to delay Glowing Sea operations until at a minimum February 2288. I hope you heed my advice when the time comes.
==*==
Arcade Gannon couldn’t help but feel the cold as the vertibird door opened. Already a light dusting of snow covered the base, and it would only get worse as winter progressed. To the east, he could see a pillar of smoke rising from the chimneys of a pre-War factory – had the Enclave really gotten it working again?
Maybe I should give them a chance, he thought.
He was quickly hurried through – by an olive-skinned woman in fatigues who named herself as Staff Sergeant Lucia – to the Colonel’s office. Apparently word of him had already reached Boston. The balding man eagerly shook his hand.
“So,” he said. “i don’t think we’re formerly introduced yet. Colonel Daniel Bradley. And you are?”
“Arcade Gannon,” he said. “Son of a ... US Army veteran, medical doctor, and humanitarian.”
“I heard about your ambitions from Jamison down in Chicago. Very noble, but you can’t achieve them without our help.”
“I know, but I’m still not sure. I only heard bad things about the Enclave growing up.”
“You shouldn’t have trusted that secessionist propaganda. Terrorists always need to justify their actions to themselves so they can ease their conscience while doing them. Besides, the official term’s not ‘Enclave’ anymore – never really was, in the end. We’re the United States Federal Government, boy, and don’t you forget it.”
Does he really believe this?, Arcade thought, then decided not to raise the question. He had no other place to go, and pissing off the Enclave or whatever by opposing their propaganda would get him thrown to the wolves at best – and he would certainly not have the ability to achieve his aim.
“So,” the Colonel continued. “I just had the idea that you should get a better perspective on us than what you were taught by the NCR. Why not take a walk around Lexington, have a view from the ground as it were, get in touch with the common man under restored American governance?”
“That sounds decent.”
“Very well,” the Colonel replied. “You might want to give this a read as well.”
He gave Arcade a book, titled “AUGUSTUS AUTUMN: THE SECOND WASHINGTON?”, its cover being a photo of its subject giving a speech before a crowd of adoring citizens, and he pocketed it to read later.
He then left the base and looked round Lexington. The town looked peaceful enough – citizens going about their business, gossiping, shopping in stores. But looks could be deceiving. Back in the Russian Empire the Tsars used to build a fake rustic village with actors pretending to be peasants to impress foreign dignitaries – all while the real peasants endured far worse conditions out of sight. Was the same con being played on him?
He passed a recruiting station on the way out of the base, noting a poster with the bold caption “IT’S A GOOD DAY TO DIE WHEN YOU KNOW THE REASON WHY!” and the men and women queuing to be registered - one of whom looked to be a boy of fifteen or sixteen.
There were soldiers present most everywhere – patrolling, standing watch, drinking in taverns and occasionally flirting with what he presumed to be local girls. No police though – apparently that service hadn’t been restored yet. And the “E” symbol, the one that brought him to mind of the Nazi Swastika or the Communist hammer-and-sickle, was nowhere to be seen in the town or on base. It seemed to have been replaced by the device of fourteen stars – thirteen in a circle round a large central star – found on the old US flag.
Another thing seemed odd to him, and he quickly realised what it was. The jangling sound of bottle-caps was entirely absent. In the NCR after the gold reserves got busted, the collapse of the NCR Dollar meant a renaissance for the cap as an unofficial and eventually official secondary currency. He’d gotten used to it most of his adult life as the sound of commerce. And now – it was absent. Apparently paper money was back in vogue under Enclave, American or whatever-it-was rule.
Then there were the robots. He’d never seen so many – along with eyebots floating through the streets and atop buildings, playing some kind of propaganda station, there were military robots in more numbers than he’d seen in his life. Mr. Gutsy types and protectrons seemed to be used to supplement the human forces and provide extra manpower. The town, though it might seem otherwise, was under military occupation. He glanced back up the main street at the base entrance and – was that a
deathclaw with some kind of electronic collar on its neck resting by the gate?
Must be keeping it docile, Arcade thought.
If the NCR had that tech, they’d have had a lot less trouble guarding their bases against Legion raids.
He checked the ID card he’d been given just before he’d left Chicago, and noted it seemed to contain a transponder. Probably kept track on him, sent his location to a central database and showed it on a map. Everyone else seemed to be wearing one pinned to their clothes as well. In two minds about the situation, he decided it was a bad idea to ditch it.
Finally, after seeing the familiar pattern of civic life repeat itself across Lexington, he decided to check out the factory. A sentry bot – three-legged, hulking and packed with a squad’s worth of firepower – greeted him cheerily as he entered.
“Good day Mr. Arcade Gannon!” it chirped in an uncanny voice for a machine so bulky. “Remember to stay safe, and try not to lose your citizenship card!”
He went in and arrived on the main floor to see a vision of Old World industry he’d never seen before. Around him, a huge series of conveyor-belt production lines was moving with frenetic energy, producing great clouds of smoke and displays of sparks that made it hard to see clearly what was happening. On one line he thought he could see the shapes of power-armour frames being moulded and welded together, on another APCs designed for said power-armour, on yet another a series of vertibird gunships, on yet another the unmistakeable shapes of armoured fighting vehicles. In the distance civilian products were being made – cars, trucks, jeeps and other such things – though he wasn’t sure if their intended purpose was to ferry families or military supplies.
He was uneasy. He’d seen a clinic on the way to the factory – maybe he should see what was happening there. Maybe that’d calm his fears.
==*==
Nate Washington cursed in frustration.
He’d tracked Kellogg down to Fort Hagen, then they’d cleared the whole damn place of the institute synths lurking there – but Kellogg had gone. Only the message he’d left behind on the terminal gave a clue as to the mercenary’s whereabouts:
Recieved new orders – leave to the C.I.T ruins. and wait for further instruction. Don’t know what the old man’s playing at, but orders are orders, and if I went rogue I wouldn’t escape the Institute’s trackers for long. Just like Virgil won’t either.
C.I.T. Ruins – that meant the ruined C.I.T. building in Cambridge - he'd passed it many times without sparing it a second glance. That entry meant Kellogg was there, for a fact. And waiting for him. He might have slipped away this time, but the next time Nate saw him, he’d make damn sure he didn’t do a repeat.
Seeing that Kellogg was gone, Nate left through the elevator with Preston and Piper (it couldn’t handle as many as he’d rounded up, especially Nick and Kleo) and the first thing he noted was a vertibird landing on the roof.
It was Elliot again.
“Hey, Nate,” he said. “We just received orders from the President himself to escort you to Sanctuary Hills along with your militiaman friend and your journalist acquaintance. How’re you doing?”
“Right as rain,” Nate lied, hoping he was able to hide the grief and frustration. “How’re you?”
“I’m good. At least this job beats fighting greenies or bandits.”
The three got in the vertibird and together headed northward.
==*==
Katy Becker was Diamond City born and bred, but when she heard the Minutemen were starting up again she couldn’t help but join. The good guys were making a comeback, and she wanted to be part of that. Plus, she might meet a cute boy or two on the way. So at the tender age of 18 she’d brought a submachine gun and a set of leather armour and headed north to Sanctuary Hills. The bridge had been repaired and some of the houses had been patched up a bit, along with new constructions that’d been added over the past few weeks.
A palisade had also been set up with turrets mounted on it, and the flags of the Minutemen and the old USA flew high above the settlement.
Suddenly, just after lunch in the new mess hall a vertibird carrying the lightning-bolt decal of the US Air Force landed outside and many, both citizens and Minutemen, rushed out to greet it.
Out of it stepped a number of men in US Armed Forces power armour and ... and ... the General. Sweet Jesus, he was so
handsome!
“Minutemen, present arms!” his loud, clear voice rang out, and the militiamen rushed to heed his order. Fifteen hundred in total, they looked a mighty (though they were wielding a wild assortment of guns, and their weapons and armour were in various states of repair) force indeed.
“Today,” the General said. “Is the day we finally finish crawling out of the gutter. Today is the day we, with the aid of soldiers and weapons from the United States Armed Forces, retake the Castle!”
At those words the Minutemen cheered and whooped so loudly it was later said you could hear it as far as Lexington.
