CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
Any chance we’ll get to see exactly how the Minutemen were integrated to the US Army and still sorta kept the name?
Fallout Fallout: Autumn Morning [Director's Cut]
- Thread starter Navarro
- Start date
Jarow
Well-known member
In the past of this fic, or this universe? In the fic, their commander is, as in canon fallout 4, a member of the pre-war US army (don't know if rank was stated there, but is Captain here). This makes him a lot more willing to work with US Army (including a war buddy who got kidnapped by Aliens). At present, they aren't integrated yet, but are in the process of being integrated.
As for in the future... (meaning The Eagle and The Bear) I don't remember whether they've been brought up as retaining name, but there's no reason not to keep the name for a unit with a history like the Minutemen.
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Chapter Nine
Navarro
Well-known member
Chapter 9
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS ON THE SUBJECT OF UNCOMPENSATED FOOD REQUISITION IN REINTEGRATED US TERRITORY
GIVEN ON ENCLAVE RADIO 7/8/2286
My fellow Americans, it falls to me to once again listen to your troubles. Apparently, the requisition of food supplies by US military forces in areas under temporary military government has caused your farms financial hardship over the past year. You have been made to sell excess produce at what you consider to be an unfair price. You have spoken to local government and military officials and received no answer. There have been numerous cases of small farmers and other agricultural workers point-blank refusing to sell our quartermasters the food that is needed for the US Armed Forces. We are a nation in ruins, and what government has been restored is still at risk at falling into chaos. In such a situation, the behaviour that has been exhibited begins to border on treason.
Imagine, farmers and fishers, a man whose organs argue amongst themselves. The stomach, selfish and short-sighted, refuses to supply sustenance to the rest of the body – and as a result he withers and dies, taking the stomach itself with him. Would you argue that the stomach's actions were wise or good in their ultimate effect? And the United States, too is a body of a sort – made out of countless men, women and children united in a common purpose, bound together by a common citizenship linking them to our Constitution. If you refuse to supply food to soldiers of the United States Armed Forces, the military will not be able to feed itself and America will wither and die just as the man died when the stomach refused to share nutrients with the other parts of the body. And so will you die like the stomach did, when the Raiders and other savages removed from these territories by our hard-fought efforts return and take their toll.
There are worse people in the wasteland than the lawful government. Did the raiders ask politely to buy your food, or did they just take it as they pleased? Did the petty warlords take any care towards the self-government of your towns, city-states, and local communities as we have? What makes us different from the barbarians of all types that continue to afflict the nation is that we bring with us the law, the order on which all civilised life depends, and the eventual restoration of full Constitutional governance. A restoration which the wholesale denial of food to the US military threatens to stop in its tracks.
Should we not expect a little gratitude, a little reward, a little loyalty, for our innumerable efforts helping and defending the American people? You indeed have a point concerning the unreasonably low prices, and from now on we will pay for your food at its market price. but be warned – any civilian who attacks the United States Armed Forces will be prosecuted as a traitor, and any who kills a US soldier will face a summary hanging for murder in the first degree and insurrection.
==*==
Jack Akely entered the mine again, the familiar chill crawling up his spine. The place was creepy as Hell, never mind the weird green pieces of paper these people used as money. Used to be tons of raiders and ferals down in here, but nevermind – even with them gone Dunwich Borers was nightmarish. There were shadows where they shouldn't be, half-heard voices on the edge of his hearing – and worse. One of the miners had gone psycho with a pickaxe screaming about rats in the walls and had killed a bunch of fellow workers before being shot, while another had carved religious symbols all over his body and thrown himself into a deep pool near the bottom of the mine, and yet another had simply gone catatonic, constantly repeating words that human tongues weren't meant to pronounce. Only single digits among the hundreds now working here, but it gave him a bad feeling for sure.
And the US troops didn't care – all the man in charge cared about, Akely was sure, was keeping the mine's productivity up and damn the consequences to the civilians. But it paid well enough, and those green pieces of paper were keeping his wife and children fed through the winter, so working in the mine was all he had. He only hoped it didn't get to him like it had to the others.
==*==
Arcade Gannon looked at Dr. Henry with more than a touch of surprise, sipping some coffee from the Lexington base's bar. He'd known the man was coming, but to actually see him arrive was something else.
“How'd your trip to Philadelphia go?” he asked. The last he'd heard was that the old Devil's Brigade had been invited to a big celebration in Delaware and were staying there until it happened. All but Henry and himself had come along – he'd wanted to see more of – Enclave? American? - territory for himself. Then he'd been sent over, apparently to help set up the NGO.
“It was fine,” Henry said. “We saw all the sites and I talked to some of the troops gathering there.”
“Troops gathering?”
“They're sending an armoured company in mid-December, along with a battalion of engineers. The idea is to clear out the land route to Boston, allow for supplies, reinforcements, and such. Vertibirds can only carry so much food and ammo, there's a constant stream of them just for the basic supplies."
“Anything you saw or heard?”
“Nothing much, just some tanks and artillery pieces. One of the soldiers was very interested in what I did after leaving Navarro though. When I told him about Jacobstown he said I must've been hallucinating the whole time.”
“I'm not surprised. From what I hear, none of the super mutants on the east coast are anything near civilised or even remotely sane. They're all psychotically violent and mentally retarded, so to speak. Quite different physiologically too.”
“Different physiology?”
“You see, they just keep growing. So the longer they avoid death, the more they grow bigger, tougher and stronger. I've even heard of specimens as tall as houses!”
“Amazing. So, onto the NGO?”
“Yes, it's working as planned. I've secured the funding, I have doctors coming in – all we need is a name for the organisation, then we can move to start setting up clinics where the people need it. Diamond City's the biggest settlement here, we can start moving in there and spread out. They only have one clinic for 5,000 people, and it's nothing but a rusty shack, or so the ambassador there says.”
“What about the Eastern Star?”
“Hmm, very clever – the five-pointed star is a symbol of the US, and we're on the East Coast. I say it's good.”
“Exactly,” Henry replied.
That was it decided then.
==*==
Jack Powers grinned savagely as he jumped down from the vertibird, firing his M-500 “Patriot” laser rifle into the raiders below. One or two were hit and died screaming as the energy-bolts struck them, then he hit the ground amidst a squad of them perched on an old fast-food restaurant. The explosive vents in his suit activated instantly after landing, pasting the group and covering his armour with their hot blood.
What a figure of dread he looked! His dark grey armour covered in the blood of his enemies, his eyelights burning red as he fired laser-shots into their midst – he looked like an angel of death. Not bad for a 15-year-old from Philly who'd joined the Service only this summer!
The rest of the battle went quick. After the drop, it took ten minutes for most of the raiders to die, and thirty for the purge team to finish tracking down and doing away with those who retreated or tried to surrender. Then they gathered in the main street of the abandoned theme park – with a view to the ruined fairytale castle that had once been the centrepiece – and prepared to head back to Canaveral.
”Men of the Black Devils,” Lieutenant Walker – the man who allegedly had raided and destroyed an alien mothership during a period when he had, though the details were still highly classified – said. “You did well today. This goodwill gesture, expertly executed, will get the people of Orlando on our side, and on the track to peaceful reintegration. As a reward for exemplary conduct I'm giving all of you who participated in the operation an extra two days of leave for tomorrow and the day after.”
As they flew over the Floridian landscape Powers talked out loud to himself.
“Man, I wish I was in Boston,” he muttered. “It must be far more exciting there than down here. I hear they even have super mutants like they used to have in DC.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” one of the soldiers next to him said. “Ten years ago the 'excitement' in DC cost me my eye. Replacing it cost like hell.”
“I hear there's fighting up in Virginia too, round Roanoke.”
“You wouldn't wanna see it, rookie. Jabsco's men are the most brutal in the Service, and you don't wanna ever get in their way – I hear they used to be mercs we hired to help fight the muties in D.C. Shame the Mayor of the place had to bring them down on him, but what do you expect, putting a United States ambassador in a lock-up like a common criminal? They coulda joined peacefully and kept their leader, but they had to go and do it. VA governor will be sending an aide to put them under military rule for the next five years at least.”
“I suppose. With what I heard they did to the Rattlesnake Gang, I''d be sure as Hell weary of getting on their bad side.”
“Exactly, boy. Still, these new ‘Patriots’ are pieces of shit. R&D eggheads tried to make a gun that could do anything, does everything about half as well as an AER9 ...”
He kept on rambling the rest of the journey back to the Canaveral outpost.
==*==
Nate looked at the power armour sitting in its dock at the Red Rocket station just south of the Old North Bridge. No damage, not even superficial, from the mirelurks. An incredible piece of tech, but he had his misgivings. The Federa; Government seemed to have offered it in good faith, but he had no clue what half the electronics inside did. Could there be a transmitter listening in on him at every moment? A self-destruct that could detonate with him inside if they decided he'd gone rogue?
He'd no clue, to be honest. As he continued trying to work the mechanisms of the alien gun (he'd figured what the problem was, it was a flaw in the circuits he was using. He'd have to get some military-grade stuff to make it work by fusion cells) he focussed on what he was going to do today. Kellogg was out there, waiting at the C.I.T. Ruins. And he was going to die by his hand.
“Piper?” he asked, seeing the brunette reporter out of the corner of his eye.
“Nate, going alone against Kellogg is too dangerous. I was at University Point just after the Institute killed everyone there, and … they're not to be trifled with.”
“What happened to University Point?”
“It was my biggest news story of 2285 - “Institute Synths Slaughter Settlement”, you remember?” she teased.
“I wasn't exactly up to date on the news then."
Piper chuckled at that.
“Anyway,” he said. “Do you want to go with me? I'm just … not sure I can keep you safe with him around.”
“I can handle it,” she said. “Just like we've handled so many things together, as a team.”
“Okay, let's get to work.”
They headed then to Cambridge.
==*==
ENCLAVE RADIO TRANSCRIPT OF ORION MORENO INTERVIEW
GIVEN 12/3/2287
[0:01] Announcer: In related news, Atomicist militants – suspected to be supplied by the illegal “New California Republic” – attacked US troops engaged in New York City, but were beaten back with no loss of life. Now, we have an exclusive interview coming right up live from our studio in Raven Rock – you won't hear this on a privately-owned channel! Americans, tonight we are interviewing Orion Moreno, veteran of the unprovoked NCR attack on Navarro Military Base – itself just nine years after the treasonous, cowardly, and terroristic assassinations of President Richardson and Vice President Daniel Bird by atomic bomb more than forty years ago. Moreno, what can you tell us about the attack on Navarro?
[0:15] Moreno: It was bloody, that's for sure. The NCR threw a lot of troops at the base, and a lot of them died.
[0:20] Announcer: Could you describe the quality of the troops – how they were armed and armoured?
[0:25] Moreno: They were conscripts, a lot still in their teens. No power armour, but they had Brotherhood of Steel support with them. Nasty snipers too. And they had a whole fucking lot of soldiers to throw at us.
[0:33] Announcer: Conscripts – can you imagine that, America? The leaders of “New California” don't even trust their own citizens to voluntarily fight for their secessionist cause, so they send them into battle herded forwards by political officers – just like Communist China two centuries ago! Every man and woman in the United States Armed Forces, by contrast, is a volunteer – he fights because he chooses to! Now, Moreno, just how did we lose Navarro?
[0:45] Moreno: We had no resources, no resupply, no reinforcements. We were, so far as we knew, the last Americans left. But we still gave them quite a good licking 'fore we lost. It took them twenty days to breach the minefield and the fence, and they were climbing over piles of their own dead before they took the airfield.
[1:10] Announcer: And after they took the airfield?
[1:15] Moreno: They took it pretty much intact, planes still on the ground . My immediate superior realised the battle was lost then and we retreated by vertibird, thinking we could regroup and start a guerilla war with other survivors. But there weren't any. Most of them fought to the last and the rest were captured. The last I saw of Navarro was the armoury blowing – whether we or they did it I never knew.
[1:30] Announcer: Can you please comment on the rumours now circulating that female United States citizens were violated en masse by NCR soldiers at Navarro, as well as the claims that infants and children were rounded up and murdered by the secessionists in the aftermath of their victory?
[1:40] Moreno: I can't say those things didn't happen – I didn't see any of the aftermath.
[1:45] Announcer: Only God knows the depths of the atrocities the degenerate secessionists committed. We ourselves may never learn the full measure. So, Moreno, what did you do after the Battle?
[2:00] Moreno: We split up and tried to move into civilian life in our own ways. But I could never let go of of what had happened. I never forgot Navarro and what I thought then was the end of America.
[2:10] Announcer: Truly sobering. Moreno, how did you come back here?
[2:30] Moreno: I joined up with my old squad six years ago and … allied with the NCR in Nevada against a raider “empire” called Caesar's Legion. We licked those savages hard, but the NCR found out our previous role as Enclave soldiers and sent bounty hunters after us. So we fled East from them until we linked up with Enclave forces in Chicago.
[2:45] Announcer: Can these secessionist scum sink any lower? When a former American soldier joins with them to aid them in battle, out of the pure goodness of his heart, they try to arrest him on false charges of war crimes! War crimes allegedly committed more than forty years ago! War crimes which they have not the slightest shred of evidence actually happened! War crimes invented out of whole cloth by their lying, secessionist government to justify vile acts of treason, sedition and terrorism against America and her citizens! I wish I was in Shady Sands right now so I could apply my God-given, Constitutional Second Amendment right on every last “New Californian” traitor I see!-
[Audio cuts off for thirty seconds]
[3:40] Announcer: I'm … in no fit state to continue with the interview. But a last message before I sign off. If any leader in the NCR is listening to this, be warned. America has risen like a phoenix from the ashes, and eventually we will stretch our wings once more from sea to shining sea. We will avenge the five thousand men, women and children you murdered at Control Station Enclave. We will take retribution for the dead and wrongly imprisoned of Navarro. America will be reunified, and the New California Republic will be done away with just like the Confederate States, just like Socialist Germany, and just like Red China. Glenn Coulter, signing off for the night.
[4:10] Announcer (Female): This is Anne Temple, signing on. And now we move onto our archives of patriotic and morally uplifting music, starting with Johnny Horton's The Battle of New Orleans.
[4:15] [Music Begins]
==*==
The sun was sinking in the sky as Nate and Piper entered the C.I.T. ruins. Kellogg stood on the steps, right before them, smirking.
“Heh,” he said. “I gave you fifty-fifty odds of making it to Diamond City. Figured the Commonwealth would eat you up like beef jerky after that. So, what do you want with me? Wouldn't have travelled all that way, so heavily armed and armoured, with your little dog and Ms. Publick Occurrences too, if you weren't planning to kill me. I don’t know why the old man wanted me to camp out here. Guess he wants a confrontation between us for some reason of his own. Maybe he’ll look to replace me with you if he wins.”
“You killed my wife,” Nate spat.
“Didn’t take you long to replace her. And what’s a wife anyway, but a hooker too lazy to go on the prowl? I learned those lessons long ago, pre-War boy scout.”
Anger and sorrow warred in Nate’s mind. He knew the bastard must be trying to rattle him, but still the words stung. He breathed deep, kept himself as cool as he could, and spoke the one question he most desperately wanted answered.
“Where. Is. My. Son!?”
“I'll tell you, Mr. Frozen TV Dinner, since you earned the right to a straight answer. Shaun's in a place where he's loved, respected and taken well care of. The Institute.”
Each taunting word was like a knife to his heart.
“Tell me how to get there, please!”
“You don't find the Institute. The Institute finds you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Doesn't matter. Only one of us is leaving this place, and it isn't you or any of your friends.”
He drew his pistol and fired. The shot grazed Nate's arm, hitting the grass behind him. Blood poured from the wound onto the grass, before he steadied the American plasma pistol, aimed, and fired.
Kellogg lived. His clothing was burnt away where his heart should be – his skin was too. Below that was only a mass of metal, plastic and and wires. Subdermal armour covered an artificial heart and lungs, encased in a ribcage reinforced by titanium alloy. The mercenary was far, far more machine than man. Dogmeat ran over, tried to rip off Kellogg's throat – and the brutal man simply threw the faithful hound off him, followed by a kick for good measure. The dog could only whimper and wheeze on the ground.
Damn. Nate and Piper tried to fire off more shots, but Kellogg simply walked forward, unheeding. The bullets bounced off him like rain, and while the plasma burnt his flesh, what damage it did was simply superficial. He was heading right for them, like he wanted to show off his invincibility.
He was – oh God, he was heading for Piper first. She tried to back away, but he moved faster and then-
Nate threw himself in front of the reporter, trying to shield her, but Kellogg simply backhanded him and knocked him away, blood pouring from his nose. Oh dear God, now he was lifting Piper by the neck, choking her, preparing to twist-
She kneed him in the groin, and Kellogg gave an animal screech of pain, distracted. That part of his anatomy at least had not been replaced with tech. There was just enough time for Nate to fire the plasma pistol, straight at his back, dialling it above all safe limits. The bolt of plasma burnt through his clothes, his skin and the subdermal armour, right at the small of his back. His metal spine melted, underwent molecular destabilisation, failed on him. Kellogg buckled – his legs paralysed – lost his grip on Piper, then screamed in rage and frustration, dropping his gun as he tried to crawl forwards on his hands.
Nate dropped his own weapon himself as the pistol overheated, burning pain stabbing his right hand through his gloves, sparking and smoking as it hit the ground. Piper rose, her hand on Kellogg's own pistol, and shot him right in the eye. The very skeletal reinforcement the Institute had given to Kellogg long ago turned against him, as the bullet ricocheted off and bounced around inside his brain, turning most of it to mush. The grey matter poured out through his ruined eye, until something lodged in the hole.
Piper pulled it out – Nate identified it, from his limited knowledge, as the man's hippocampus. There seemed to be some kind of hard drive attached to it – whatever the Institute meant to keep for itself by doing this, Nate swore he'd find out.
“Well, that's one obituary to put in the newspaper,” Nate joked, though he didn't really feel like it. Piper was still too shocked to laugh.
And then there was Dogmeat (at least as Mama Murphy called him, Nate called him ‘Ace’ after his old golden retriever). The brave hound had a broken leg, and Nate prepared to give him the only mercy he could – until he remembered something. Back before the War the police had used some kind of cyborg dog. Maybe they still knew how to make them – maybe they could save his new dog, preserve him like that.
That was it decided then – he was heading to Lexington with the dog and the piece of Kellogg's brain.
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS ON THE SUBJECT OF UNCOMPENSATED FOOD REQUISITION IN REINTEGRATED US TERRITORY
GIVEN ON ENCLAVE RADIO 7/8/2286
My fellow Americans, it falls to me to once again listen to your troubles. Apparently, the requisition of food supplies by US military forces in areas under temporary military government has caused your farms financial hardship over the past year. You have been made to sell excess produce at what you consider to be an unfair price. You have spoken to local government and military officials and received no answer. There have been numerous cases of small farmers and other agricultural workers point-blank refusing to sell our quartermasters the food that is needed for the US Armed Forces. We are a nation in ruins, and what government has been restored is still at risk at falling into chaos. In such a situation, the behaviour that has been exhibited begins to border on treason.
Imagine, farmers and fishers, a man whose organs argue amongst themselves. The stomach, selfish and short-sighted, refuses to supply sustenance to the rest of the body – and as a result he withers and dies, taking the stomach itself with him. Would you argue that the stomach's actions were wise or good in their ultimate effect? And the United States, too is a body of a sort – made out of countless men, women and children united in a common purpose, bound together by a common citizenship linking them to our Constitution. If you refuse to supply food to soldiers of the United States Armed Forces, the military will not be able to feed itself and America will wither and die just as the man died when the stomach refused to share nutrients with the other parts of the body. And so will you die like the stomach did, when the Raiders and other savages removed from these territories by our hard-fought efforts return and take their toll.
There are worse people in the wasteland than the lawful government. Did the raiders ask politely to buy your food, or did they just take it as they pleased? Did the petty warlords take any care towards the self-government of your towns, city-states, and local communities as we have? What makes us different from the barbarians of all types that continue to afflict the nation is that we bring with us the law, the order on which all civilised life depends, and the eventual restoration of full Constitutional governance. A restoration which the wholesale denial of food to the US military threatens to stop in its tracks.
Should we not expect a little gratitude, a little reward, a little loyalty, for our innumerable efforts helping and defending the American people? You indeed have a point concerning the unreasonably low prices, and from now on we will pay for your food at its market price. but be warned – any civilian who attacks the United States Armed Forces will be prosecuted as a traitor, and any who kills a US soldier will face a summary hanging for murder in the first degree and insurrection.
==*==
Jack Akely entered the mine again, the familiar chill crawling up his spine. The place was creepy as Hell, never mind the weird green pieces of paper these people used as money. Used to be tons of raiders and ferals down in here, but nevermind – even with them gone Dunwich Borers was nightmarish. There were shadows where they shouldn't be, half-heard voices on the edge of his hearing – and worse. One of the miners had gone psycho with a pickaxe screaming about rats in the walls and had killed a bunch of fellow workers before being shot, while another had carved religious symbols all over his body and thrown himself into a deep pool near the bottom of the mine, and yet another had simply gone catatonic, constantly repeating words that human tongues weren't meant to pronounce. Only single digits among the hundreds now working here, but it gave him a bad feeling for sure.
And the US troops didn't care – all the man in charge cared about, Akely was sure, was keeping the mine's productivity up and damn the consequences to the civilians. But it paid well enough, and those green pieces of paper were keeping his wife and children fed through the winter, so working in the mine was all he had. He only hoped it didn't get to him like it had to the others.
==*==
Arcade Gannon looked at Dr. Henry with more than a touch of surprise, sipping some coffee from the Lexington base's bar. He'd known the man was coming, but to actually see him arrive was something else.
“How'd your trip to Philadelphia go?” he asked. The last he'd heard was that the old Devil's Brigade had been invited to a big celebration in Delaware and were staying there until it happened. All but Henry and himself had come along – he'd wanted to see more of – Enclave? American? - territory for himself. Then he'd been sent over, apparently to help set up the NGO.
“It was fine,” Henry said. “We saw all the sites and I talked to some of the troops gathering there.”
“Troops gathering?”
“They're sending an armoured company in mid-December, along with a battalion of engineers. The idea is to clear out the land route to Boston, allow for supplies, reinforcements, and such. Vertibirds can only carry so much food and ammo, there's a constant stream of them just for the basic supplies."
“Anything you saw or heard?”
“Nothing much, just some tanks and artillery pieces. One of the soldiers was very interested in what I did after leaving Navarro though. When I told him about Jacobstown he said I must've been hallucinating the whole time.”
“I'm not surprised. From what I hear, none of the super mutants on the east coast are anything near civilised or even remotely sane. They're all psychotically violent and mentally retarded, so to speak. Quite different physiologically too.”
“Different physiology?”
“You see, they just keep growing. So the longer they avoid death, the more they grow bigger, tougher and stronger. I've even heard of specimens as tall as houses!”
“Amazing. So, onto the NGO?”
“Yes, it's working as planned. I've secured the funding, I have doctors coming in – all we need is a name for the organisation, then we can move to start setting up clinics where the people need it. Diamond City's the biggest settlement here, we can start moving in there and spread out. They only have one clinic for 5,000 people, and it's nothing but a rusty shack, or so the ambassador there says.”
“What about the Eastern Star?”
“Hmm, very clever – the five-pointed star is a symbol of the US, and we're on the East Coast. I say it's good.”
“Exactly,” Henry replied.
That was it decided then.
==*==
Jack Powers grinned savagely as he jumped down from the vertibird, firing his M-500 “Patriot” laser rifle into the raiders below. One or two were hit and died screaming as the energy-bolts struck them, then he hit the ground amidst a squad of them perched on an old fast-food restaurant. The explosive vents in his suit activated instantly after landing, pasting the group and covering his armour with their hot blood.
What a figure of dread he looked! His dark grey armour covered in the blood of his enemies, his eyelights burning red as he fired laser-shots into their midst – he looked like an angel of death. Not bad for a 15-year-old from Philly who'd joined the Service only this summer!
The rest of the battle went quick. After the drop, it took ten minutes for most of the raiders to die, and thirty for the purge team to finish tracking down and doing away with those who retreated or tried to surrender. Then they gathered in the main street of the abandoned theme park – with a view to the ruined fairytale castle that had once been the centrepiece – and prepared to head back to Canaveral.
”Men of the Black Devils,” Lieutenant Walker – the man who allegedly had raided and destroyed an alien mothership during a period when he had, though the details were still highly classified – said. “You did well today. This goodwill gesture, expertly executed, will get the people of Orlando on our side, and on the track to peaceful reintegration. As a reward for exemplary conduct I'm giving all of you who participated in the operation an extra two days of leave for tomorrow and the day after.”
As they flew over the Floridian landscape Powers talked out loud to himself.
“Man, I wish I was in Boston,” he muttered. “It must be far more exciting there than down here. I hear they even have super mutants like they used to have in DC.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” one of the soldiers next to him said. “Ten years ago the 'excitement' in DC cost me my eye. Replacing it cost like hell.”
“I hear there's fighting up in Virginia too, round Roanoke.”
“You wouldn't wanna see it, rookie. Jabsco's men are the most brutal in the Service, and you don't wanna ever get in their way – I hear they used to be mercs we hired to help fight the muties in D.C. Shame the Mayor of the place had to bring them down on him, but what do you expect, putting a United States ambassador in a lock-up like a common criminal? They coulda joined peacefully and kept their leader, but they had to go and do it. VA governor will be sending an aide to put them under military rule for the next five years at least.”
“I suppose. With what I heard they did to the Rattlesnake Gang, I''d be sure as Hell weary of getting on their bad side.”
“Exactly, boy. Still, these new ‘Patriots’ are pieces of shit. R&D eggheads tried to make a gun that could do anything, does everything about half as well as an AER9 ...”
He kept on rambling the rest of the journey back to the Canaveral outpost.
==*==
Nate looked at the power armour sitting in its dock at the Red Rocket station just south of the Old North Bridge. No damage, not even superficial, from the mirelurks. An incredible piece of tech, but he had his misgivings. The Federa; Government seemed to have offered it in good faith, but he had no clue what half the electronics inside did. Could there be a transmitter listening in on him at every moment? A self-destruct that could detonate with him inside if they decided he'd gone rogue?
He'd no clue, to be honest. As he continued trying to work the mechanisms of the alien gun (he'd figured what the problem was, it was a flaw in the circuits he was using. He'd have to get some military-grade stuff to make it work by fusion cells) he focussed on what he was going to do today. Kellogg was out there, waiting at the C.I.T. Ruins. And he was going to die by his hand.
“Piper?” he asked, seeing the brunette reporter out of the corner of his eye.
“Nate, going alone against Kellogg is too dangerous. I was at University Point just after the Institute killed everyone there, and … they're not to be trifled with.”
“What happened to University Point?”
“It was my biggest news story of 2285 - “Institute Synths Slaughter Settlement”, you remember?” she teased.
“I wasn't exactly up to date on the news then."
Piper chuckled at that.
“Anyway,” he said. “Do you want to go with me? I'm just … not sure I can keep you safe with him around.”
“I can handle it,” she said. “Just like we've handled so many things together, as a team.”
“Okay, let's get to work.”
They headed then to Cambridge.
==*==
ENCLAVE RADIO TRANSCRIPT OF ORION MORENO INTERVIEW
GIVEN 12/3/2287
[0:01] Announcer: In related news, Atomicist militants – suspected to be supplied by the illegal “New California Republic” – attacked US troops engaged in New York City, but were beaten back with no loss of life. Now, we have an exclusive interview coming right up live from our studio in Raven Rock – you won't hear this on a privately-owned channel! Americans, tonight we are interviewing Orion Moreno, veteran of the unprovoked NCR attack on Navarro Military Base – itself just nine years after the treasonous, cowardly, and terroristic assassinations of President Richardson and Vice President Daniel Bird by atomic bomb more than forty years ago. Moreno, what can you tell us about the attack on Navarro?
[0:15] Moreno: It was bloody, that's for sure. The NCR threw a lot of troops at the base, and a lot of them died.
[0:20] Announcer: Could you describe the quality of the troops – how they were armed and armoured?
[0:25] Moreno: They were conscripts, a lot still in their teens. No power armour, but they had Brotherhood of Steel support with them. Nasty snipers too. And they had a whole fucking lot of soldiers to throw at us.
[0:33] Announcer: Conscripts – can you imagine that, America? The leaders of “New California” don't even trust their own citizens to voluntarily fight for their secessionist cause, so they send them into battle herded forwards by political officers – just like Communist China two centuries ago! Every man and woman in the United States Armed Forces, by contrast, is a volunteer – he fights because he chooses to! Now, Moreno, just how did we lose Navarro?
[0:45] Moreno: We had no resources, no resupply, no reinforcements. We were, so far as we knew, the last Americans left. But we still gave them quite a good licking 'fore we lost. It took them twenty days to breach the minefield and the fence, and they were climbing over piles of their own dead before they took the airfield.
[1:10] Announcer: And after they took the airfield?
[1:15] Moreno: They took it pretty much intact, planes still on the ground . My immediate superior realised the battle was lost then and we retreated by vertibird, thinking we could regroup and start a guerilla war with other survivors. But there weren't any. Most of them fought to the last and the rest were captured. The last I saw of Navarro was the armoury blowing – whether we or they did it I never knew.
[1:30] Announcer: Can you please comment on the rumours now circulating that female United States citizens were violated en masse by NCR soldiers at Navarro, as well as the claims that infants and children were rounded up and murdered by the secessionists in the aftermath of their victory?
[1:40] Moreno: I can't say those things didn't happen – I didn't see any of the aftermath.
[1:45] Announcer: Only God knows the depths of the atrocities the degenerate secessionists committed. We ourselves may never learn the full measure. So, Moreno, what did you do after the Battle?
[2:00] Moreno: We split up and tried to move into civilian life in our own ways. But I could never let go of of what had happened. I never forgot Navarro and what I thought then was the end of America.
[2:10] Announcer: Truly sobering. Moreno, how did you come back here?
[2:30] Moreno: I joined up with my old squad six years ago and … allied with the NCR in Nevada against a raider “empire” called Caesar's Legion. We licked those savages hard, but the NCR found out our previous role as Enclave soldiers and sent bounty hunters after us. So we fled East from them until we linked up with Enclave forces in Chicago.
[2:45] Announcer: Can these secessionist scum sink any lower? When a former American soldier joins with them to aid them in battle, out of the pure goodness of his heart, they try to arrest him on false charges of war crimes! War crimes allegedly committed more than forty years ago! War crimes which they have not the slightest shred of evidence actually happened! War crimes invented out of whole cloth by their lying, secessionist government to justify vile acts of treason, sedition and terrorism against America and her citizens! I wish I was in Shady Sands right now so I could apply my God-given, Constitutional Second Amendment right on every last “New Californian” traitor I see!-
[Audio cuts off for thirty seconds]
[3:40] Announcer: I'm … in no fit state to continue with the interview. But a last message before I sign off. If any leader in the NCR is listening to this, be warned. America has risen like a phoenix from the ashes, and eventually we will stretch our wings once more from sea to shining sea. We will avenge the five thousand men, women and children you murdered at Control Station Enclave. We will take retribution for the dead and wrongly imprisoned of Navarro. America will be reunified, and the New California Republic will be done away with just like the Confederate States, just like Socialist Germany, and just like Red China. Glenn Coulter, signing off for the night.
[4:10] Announcer (Female): This is Anne Temple, signing on. And now we move onto our archives of patriotic and morally uplifting music, starting with Johnny Horton's The Battle of New Orleans.
[4:15] [Music Begins]
==*==
The sun was sinking in the sky as Nate and Piper entered the C.I.T. ruins. Kellogg stood on the steps, right before them, smirking.
“Heh,” he said. “I gave you fifty-fifty odds of making it to Diamond City. Figured the Commonwealth would eat you up like beef jerky after that. So, what do you want with me? Wouldn't have travelled all that way, so heavily armed and armoured, with your little dog and Ms. Publick Occurrences too, if you weren't planning to kill me. I don’t know why the old man wanted me to camp out here. Guess he wants a confrontation between us for some reason of his own. Maybe he’ll look to replace me with you if he wins.”
“You killed my wife,” Nate spat.
“Didn’t take you long to replace her. And what’s a wife anyway, but a hooker too lazy to go on the prowl? I learned those lessons long ago, pre-War boy scout.”
Anger and sorrow warred in Nate’s mind. He knew the bastard must be trying to rattle him, but still the words stung. He breathed deep, kept himself as cool as he could, and spoke the one question he most desperately wanted answered.
“Where. Is. My. Son!?”
“I'll tell you, Mr. Frozen TV Dinner, since you earned the right to a straight answer. Shaun's in a place where he's loved, respected and taken well care of. The Institute.”
Each taunting word was like a knife to his heart.
“Tell me how to get there, please!”
“You don't find the Institute. The Institute finds you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Doesn't matter. Only one of us is leaving this place, and it isn't you or any of your friends.”
He drew his pistol and fired. The shot grazed Nate's arm, hitting the grass behind him. Blood poured from the wound onto the grass, before he steadied the American plasma pistol, aimed, and fired.
Kellogg lived. His clothing was burnt away where his heart should be – his skin was too. Below that was only a mass of metal, plastic and and wires. Subdermal armour covered an artificial heart and lungs, encased in a ribcage reinforced by titanium alloy. The mercenary was far, far more machine than man. Dogmeat ran over, tried to rip off Kellogg's throat – and the brutal man simply threw the faithful hound off him, followed by a kick for good measure. The dog could only whimper and wheeze on the ground.
Damn. Nate and Piper tried to fire off more shots, but Kellogg simply walked forward, unheeding. The bullets bounced off him like rain, and while the plasma burnt his flesh, what damage it did was simply superficial. He was heading right for them, like he wanted to show off his invincibility.
He was – oh God, he was heading for Piper first. She tried to back away, but he moved faster and then-
Nate threw himself in front of the reporter, trying to shield her, but Kellogg simply backhanded him and knocked him away, blood pouring from his nose. Oh dear God, now he was lifting Piper by the neck, choking her, preparing to twist-
She kneed him in the groin, and Kellogg gave an animal screech of pain, distracted. That part of his anatomy at least had not been replaced with tech. There was just enough time for Nate to fire the plasma pistol, straight at his back, dialling it above all safe limits. The bolt of plasma burnt through his clothes, his skin and the subdermal armour, right at the small of his back. His metal spine melted, underwent molecular destabilisation, failed on him. Kellogg buckled – his legs paralysed – lost his grip on Piper, then screamed in rage and frustration, dropping his gun as he tried to crawl forwards on his hands.
Nate dropped his own weapon himself as the pistol overheated, burning pain stabbing his right hand through his gloves, sparking and smoking as it hit the ground. Piper rose, her hand on Kellogg's own pistol, and shot him right in the eye. The very skeletal reinforcement the Institute had given to Kellogg long ago turned against him, as the bullet ricocheted off and bounced around inside his brain, turning most of it to mush. The grey matter poured out through his ruined eye, until something lodged in the hole.
Piper pulled it out – Nate identified it, from his limited knowledge, as the man's hippocampus. There seemed to be some kind of hard drive attached to it – whatever the Institute meant to keep for itself by doing this, Nate swore he'd find out.
“Well, that's one obituary to put in the newspaper,” Nate joked, though he didn't really feel like it. Piper was still too shocked to laugh.
And then there was Dogmeat (at least as Mama Murphy called him, Nate called him ‘Ace’ after his old golden retriever). The brave hound had a broken leg, and Nate prepared to give him the only mercy he could – until he remembered something. Back before the War the police had used some kind of cyborg dog. Maybe they still knew how to make them – maybe they could save his new dog, preserve him like that.
That was it decided then – he was heading to Lexington with the dog and the piece of Kellogg's brain.
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Chapter Ten
Navarro
Well-known member
Chapter Ten
Nate walked into Lexington, noting the soldiers stationed around the town, overseeing the familiar patterns of civic life. They wore full-body combat armour, exposing nothing beneath, and had laser rifles of the same type Nate had seen the power-armour equipped troops wearing. Boxy and black-painted, they had the same dials and buttons Nate had used himself with his new plasma pistol, and either a chain-bayonet or a grenade launcher mounted under the barrel.
The town itself was different from what it had been only a month or so prior. Food and drink, other daily necessities, and even guns and ammo were being sold on the main street while bars and diners were scattered around. Lights now shone from apartment windows and even the great factory dominating the centre of town was now operational. Were it not for the skeletal highway cutting through the town, the ruined buildings (some covered in scaffolding, to be fair) and the piles of rubble still scattered around Nate would have thought the bombs had never dropped and two hundred years hadn’t passed.
Carrying Dogmeat (Who names a dog that anyway?, Nate mused, I better change it to something more fitting. ‘Ace’, or ‘Rex’, perhaps?) into the base (Piper’s clearance apparently needed renewal) he walked by, noting various recruits engaged to the infirmary, noting the antiseptic smell and the spotless appearance. There were three Ms. Nannies and twelve human nurses present (one looked very cute), working under the stern eye of a blonde in a lab coat.
“What’s your business here?” she curtly asked. “This infirmary is for military personnel, not civilians – even if they’re veterans. You’ll have better luck in the general clinic.”
“It’s my dog,” he confessed. “He got badly injured, and I don’t want to put him down. Can you ... fix him?”
A pang of sympathy seemed to cross her face.
“We don’t have the facilities for that here. But if you leave him with me I’ll send him to Adams AFB on the next flight out and have him upgraded there. He’ll probably have a lifespan exceeding yours by the time we’re through with him. Nice present for the great-grandkids, no?”
There was another thing to ask. He knew the Government troops had been round to Vault 111 after he had left. If there was the ghost of a chance that … he would take it.
“In Vault 111,” he said, taking a deep breath. “You know that my wife was shot just before she was taken into cryo. Is there a possibility … ?”
The nurse’s face took on a look of severe disappointment, and Nate’s heart felt a bitter chill as he seemed to sense what she was going to say.
“It doesn’t work that way,” the nurse said. “I was part of the medical team that was sent into Vault 111 and … your wife was shot multiple times in the heart, lung and head with a .44 magnum. She was dead before the cryo kicked in. I’m … I’m awfully sorry for your loss. I can’t say any more.”
Tears ran down Nate’s cheek despite himself. Even if he found his son, even if he hadn’t been experimented on or mutated or God knows what … Nora was irrevocably gone to him. They would never be a family again together, at least in this world. After five or so minutes he took a deep breath, used a tissue that the nurse had given him to dry his eyes. There was still a nation to help rebuild; more than that, Shaun still needed rescuing.
He had to go on. It was what Nora would have wanted.
He left his dog there and went on to his main reason for going here. The main science laboratories weren’t far from the infirmary and he got there relatively quickly. There he found Whitley’s office and knocked hard three times on the door.
The balding scientist quickly arrived and opened the door, before sitting on his swivel chair and finishing what he’d been working on with his computer. Nate noted with astonishment that he was using a keyboard and some kind of tracking device to manipulate a graphical user interface. That sort of thing had only been floated around in science magazines back before the War.
Whitley seemed to notice his surprise and turned round on his swivel chair.
“Like what you see Nate? What you’re seeing right now is the bleeding edge of computer science. The old command-line interfaces will be obsolete soon – they’re all going to be phased out.”
He seemed somewhat sad about that.
“Uh ... well, impressive.”
“Heh, I know you’re too surprised to give a real response. But I don’t think you’re here to be looking at tech, now? What’s your real reason?”
Nate took out the piece of Kellogg’s brain. Whitley blanched at the sight.
“What on God’s good earth is that?!”
“The hippocampus of a mercenary who was working with the Institute, augmented with some kind of external memory storage. I think it might still contain his memories – including how to get in.”
“Joey, come here! Daddy wants you to take a look at something one of his friends brought him.”
An eyebot idly hovering in the corner enthusiastically blipped and beeped before scanning Nate and the grisly object he was holding. After the scan was complete, it gave a whine of frustration.
“It’s very strongly encrypted. Even with my upgrades, Joey can’t get anything out of it.”
“Damn! I need to get into the Institute to find my son.”
“Your son?”
“They ... they kidnapped him when he was a baby. My wife was killed trying to hold onto him.”
Even now, bringing it up still hurt. Bitter tears once more flowed from his eyes. Clinging to that hope more than a month had made it even worse when it was dashed.
Whitley looked pale.
“Well, we do have a possibility.”
“For God’s sake tell me what it is!”
“We could theoretically use a simulation pod to project the memories inside as a VR environment and thus bypass the encryption. Regrettably I don’t know of any simulation pods aside from the ones we recovered from Vault 112, and they’re military-only. Used for pilot training as I understand.”
The memory den in Goodneighbour, Nate thought. I’ll go there with Nick and see if it works. It has to.
“I think I might know of simulation pods present in Boston.”
“Good,” Whitley said. “By the way – if you find out how to enter the Institute, do tell us everything you learn. We have our own reasons for wanting to know how to get in.”
“God bless you,” Nate said as he prepared to head back to Sanctuary for the night.
“Godspeed.”
==*==
The cold air hit Arcade Gannon hard as the APC opened up and the occupants prepared to get out. They were seven in total – Arcade, Dr. Henry, two former combat medics, two civilian doctors, and a Ms. Nanny medical robot. He got out, passed the statue of a baseball player at the entrance, and spoke into the intercom.
“This is Dr. Arcade Gannon, Eastern Star Medical and Emergency Relief Organisation. We’re here to set up a clinic in town.”
“Mr. Beauregard said to expect you. He’ll be waiting at the entrance.”
The door opened, and the group met up with the official ambassador – well, officially consul – to Diamond City.
Beauregard was a tall, handsome and blond man dressed in a heavy black greatcoat with a Mr. Gutsy by his side and a laser rifle carried on his back. He certainly didn’t look like an ambassador, but Arcade had heard there’d been an assassination attempt and he guessed the US Government (was that what he was thinking of the Enclave as now? It was certainly what their radio station said they were over and over.) wanted to dissuade further attempts in future.
He made his introductions, shook Arcade’s hand, and led them to what would be their home for the foreseeable future.
It was a moderately large building located near the centre of town, with two stories (the staff slept above, downstairs was for the patients) and a spacious cellar holding a surgical theatre and the medicine storehouse. It was reasonably clean, but not up to the standards of the government hospitals in core NCR territory where Arcade had trained before heading over to Vegas. But then, those places had been for the middle class and above. Poor people subsisted on the Followers’ charity, or distressingly often, nothing at all. And with the pharmaceutical crisis that’d been brewing before he fled the NCR, he wasn’t sure if those places were still doing as well as they had been.
“How did you come by this place?” Arcade asked idly.
“I brought it. It cost twenty thousand caps, but that’s small change for us. Good time with the Mayor’s secretary too.”
Arcade just rolled his eyes at that. Hopefully the man wouldn’t brag about his conquests any more.
“How’d you get so many caps to spend?”
“The Department of the Treasury has the blueprints and the raw materials to build printing machines and make as many ‘genuine’ nuka-cola bottle caps as we want. Really useful for dealing with people who’re still convinced they’re real currency.”
“Wouldn’t that cause massive inflation as so many caps enter the market?”
“Exactly the intent. You see, from our perspective it’s just another incentive to make people go back to good old US D. The cap inevitably suffers immense depreciation as the amount of people using it stays constant, while that of people using the dollar grows, avoiding inflation on that front. So people gain an additional reason to turn in their caps to the exchange programs we’ve set up. There are additional effects beyond our borders as caps circulate out of are territory … ones that are quite useful for reintegration purposes.”
It was ... logical, but it still felt heartless. At least it was better than what Arcade guessed the old Enclave’s solution to the same problem would have been. Forty years was a long time, but it still felt shocking that the Enclave could have reformed from its previous genocidal mania so quickly. And he was still suspicious that they hadn’t changed so much as it looked like they had.
==*==
REPORT ON UNIQUE SOCIAL, PHYSIOLOGICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF HOMO BRUTUS BOSTONII
From: Dr. Karen A. Lewis
To: Dr. Robert S. Whitley, Chief Scientific Adjunct to the Massachusetts Expedition
Thought For The Day: So long as one American lives, so does America.
This report details unique characteristics of the subspecies Homo Brutus Bostonii (the informal designation “super mutant” or “Boston super mutant” will be used from now on) for the purpose of:
A. More effectively eliminating the hostile sub-humans.
B. Increasing our understanding of FEV in hopes of meeting the Project’s original goals, as set by the pre-2077 researchers who first developed it.
First off: physiology. The Boston mutants share many physical similarities with their southern cousins, the extirpated breed of Vault 87 super mutants, including but not limited to:
A. Complete atrophy of all sexual characteristics. Boston mutants possess no primary, secondary or tertiary sexual features and are to all intents and purposes sexless.
B. Continued growth throughout life, culminating in a gargantuan “Behemoth” stage.
C. Lesser intellect, higher than the Vault 87 breed but lower than Mariposa-strain mutants.
Genetic analysis of the FEV strains involved also seems to bear this out, though my results are still inconclusive. Autopsy and vivisection has also established similarities between the two strains (if only we had more records on the Mariposa strain for proper analysis!)
The Boston mutants’ diet is that of an obligate carnivore. They seem to have little qualms about what they eat, and commonly engage in cannibalism. This seems to be the impetus behind their constant raids on pure-strain human outposts and settlements.
Socially, they have established a clear chain of command and dominance-based social structure. Older and thus stronger mutants dominate the weaker ones and thus rule – at least until they reach Behemoth state, their minds atrophy, and they lose all social status. Psychologically, they are driven by a perception of themselves as superior mixed with self-hatred which causes them to lash out at pure-strain humanity – they take out their hatred on themselves from existing towards us, which they express in their ultra-violence and tendency for cannibal feasts. In some way their extirpation will be a mercy killing.
As for their makers – on each and every super mutant I’ve cut apart, whether dead or in vivo, some kind of device has been found implanted in the back of the neck. I’ve sent samples to you for study, as whoever implanted these would seem to be the creators of the Boston super mutants. This is concerning, as whoever is creating these beings must have access to significant supplies of FEV – a highly dangerous mutagen and bioweapon is no small concern. Pre-War records have not helped us to narrow it down, as the FEV Project’s paper trail on the Eastern Seaboard has not survived the passage of time.
Tactically, their increased intellect helps them make common use of traps and more advanced tactics than the Vault 87 mutants. A common tactic seems to be that regular mutants pin down enemy forces while specialised “suicide” mutants flank, reach melee range, and detonate themselves with a mini-nuke. Shamefully, this tactic has cost some of our soldiers their lives, as they were underestimated their enemies and did not think much of “smart mutants”. Land mines and IEDs have also been used by them, resulting in injuries, some requiring amputation while we wait for more cybernetic shipments to arrive (without power armour most of these casualties would have been killed instantly).
As for numbers – we estimate 20,000 at maximum, but highly divided. They could overwhelm out local forces at the present time if they managed to unify – perish the thought! - and even divided represent the largest current threat towards the reclamation and reintegration of the Greater Boston Area.
God Bless America.
==*==
Major Campbell was not impressed by what he saw before him as he entered Fort Independence. The local militia were in threadbare outfits of grey or butternut – a few in proper fatigues scavenged from old military facilities – and there were only a few of them. Dozens, a hundred at best. He’d heard reports that there were approximately 5,000, but for the most part these were right now in their various homesteads and farming settlements. And their weapons! – they used shotguns and hunting rifles, a few with select-fire rifles, but the most common gun was some kind of bashed-together laser rifle which fired slowly but had stopping power enough to take out a super mutant in one hit.
The Patriot took a three-round burst to do so, but it fired faster anyway. Not that the new gun introduced to the US military earlier in the decade was much better than the AER9 – the thing had been designed by eggheads who’d never been within a dozen klicks of shots being fired. Lots of fancy settings, but half of them aren’t worth shit in a firefight, and the dials keep breaking off. It was slightly more powerful in that it fired in the orange portion of the visual spectrum – a 10% or 15% boost in killing power. He wasn't sure that had been worth moving to replace the AER9 with it.
Part of him wondered why the US Government even bothered with these locals. Local militia, paramilitary forces and mercenaries were often essential to reintegrating an area – they could be used for tasks the Army’s actual manpower wasn’t worth being spent on, while eventually being groomed into becoming part of that same force. Back in DC two merc units, Talon Company and Reilly’s Rangers, had been helpful in securing the rear areas during wars with the Brotherhood and the super mutants before eventually being integrated completely into the regular US Army.
It had been very touch-and-go in the beginning of those days, back in ‘77. The number of Americans who held true loyalty to the government had been some 20,000 at most. Many of them had been Vault Dwellers who’d been brought along during the Exodus or incorporated after it took place - Campbell himself had been from Vault 18. One of the largest Vaults constructed, in North California, it had housed 5,000 civilians before it had been evacuated and had its entrance blown in back in ‘46. Campbell had been a young boy then – he remembered his old terror as he looked on the overwhelming vistas of the sun and the blue sky, and had felt an overwhelming urge to run back into the cave where the Vault’s entrance had been located. Together with every last base the people at Navarro could contact, there had been 2,000 fighting men available at DC.
That was all the soldiers America had possessed at that point in time. If the Federal Government had lost then, coming back from such a defeat would have been unimaginable. But Autumn had led them to victory after victory, their numbers swelling with each city-state and settlement brought back into the fold. The US was there again to stay, at least down south. But up here, it was still touch-and-go.
He guessed that was why this militia were being treated as allies. The Army and Marine Corps needed all the help they could get down here, and – well, Campbell had heard the rumours about the commander of these particular forces. Claims that he was a pre-War military officer somehow impossibly preserved. At the least, he had the ear of the President, and that meant something. The man had an undoubted eye for talent – Walker, Holt, Stiggs, Richardson, and more. Campbell sighed as he talked to the man’s 2IC – a dark-skinned man, name Preston Garvey, likeable enough. He would make the estimates of how much materiel these folk needed and send them on to Rhonda – the girl had a good head for organisation.
These people would certainly need a lot of it to be worthwhile.
==*==
MEMO: INSTITUTE INFILTRATORS IN ARMED FORCES
From: Doctor Robert S. Whitley
To: President Augustus Autumn, Colonel Daniel Bradley, Admiral David Keller
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Merely to survive is never enough.
I’m concerned about possible Institute infiltration – using their androids designed specifically to pass as human. While they’re unable to make a direct insertion into our bases – the security systems we have are more than sufficient to proof against that, and the chances of infiltrators being among the forces sent to Boston are infinitesimal – I’m worried that they could be along the natives we are presently recruiting at Lexington. As I’ve got no test capable of weeding out androids from humans – not one applicable to a large population, at any rate – I recommend caution when dealing with the new recruits. Perhaps we could deny them promotion above a certain rank or deployment to sensitive sites until the business we have with C.I.T. is concluded? I think caution is definitely called for here.
God Bless America.
-*-
RE: INSTITUTE INFILTRATORS IN ARMED FORCES
From: President Augustus Autumn
To: Dr. Robert S. Whitley, Chief Scientific Adjunct to the Massachusetts Expedition
Have set new policies in place dealing with the issue.
P.S. You’re overdue on the feasibility study re: applying stealth fields to vertibirds and other aircraft. Me and General Duplessis are still waiting, and she’s less patient than I am.
==*==
Some people called him Blackheart. Others called him Bloody Joe. Many more called him Mad Jack, but never when they thought he could hear them. He’d led his gang on dozens of raids from New Haven to Plymouth Rock, and dozens more farms and settlements paid him regular tribute to keep him away. They gave him their food, their water and their women and in return he made sure other people stayed well enough away.
He looked at the pathetic wretch before him, idly waiting for him to speak.
“You said you’re from Boston, right?”
“Yeah, I am,” the teenager desperately said. He was barely old enough to grow a beard, with a shrimpish physique that Jack gave an undisguised sneer at. “All the big shots there are going down. Jared, Slag, Tower Tom, Sully Mathis – they’re all getting wasted one by one. I’m the last survivor of Red Tourette’s gang myself.”
“What happened to Red Tourette?”
“We were chilling at home base after a raid for supplies, when suddenly this big fucking siren started sounding above us. Then these motherfuckers in power armour just fell out of the sky around us and started shooting up the place. There were lasers and grenades fucking everywhere, and that plasma shit as well. One of our guys put on a suit of power armour, but they just fried him with a motherfucking lightning gun.”
“I only survived ‘cause a grenade shockwave knocked me out and sent me into the latrine ditch. After I came to I checked the bunker, but they’d used some kind of flamethrower to smoke the folks there out. Everybody had either burned up or choked to death.”
“After that I just got the fuck out of Boston.”
Mad Jack seemed to be mulling over the situation.
“I think I know who the fuck this is,” he said plainly. “It’s the motherfuckers that set up that damn fucking radio station, call themselves the fucking Government and want to muscle us the fuck out. We’ve all gotta join together or die. Hang together, or hang separately. They'll start in Boston, but before long they'll be wiping gangs out across all of New fucking England.”
“This is what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna gather up every gang from Rhode Island, Cape Cod, Boston and Massachusetts. Then I’m gonna make war on these fuckheads and send them crying back to their mommies in Washington town. And then, I’ll make sure no-one messes with us ever again!”
That was that for the planning of this particular campaign.
The assembled raiders whooped and cheered, firing weapons into the air.
Nate walked into Lexington, noting the soldiers stationed around the town, overseeing the familiar patterns of civic life. They wore full-body combat armour, exposing nothing beneath, and had laser rifles of the same type Nate had seen the power-armour equipped troops wearing. Boxy and black-painted, they had the same dials and buttons Nate had used himself with his new plasma pistol, and either a chain-bayonet or a grenade launcher mounted under the barrel.
The town itself was different from what it had been only a month or so prior. Food and drink, other daily necessities, and even guns and ammo were being sold on the main street while bars and diners were scattered around. Lights now shone from apartment windows and even the great factory dominating the centre of town was now operational. Were it not for the skeletal highway cutting through the town, the ruined buildings (some covered in scaffolding, to be fair) and the piles of rubble still scattered around Nate would have thought the bombs had never dropped and two hundred years hadn’t passed.
Carrying Dogmeat (Who names a dog that anyway?, Nate mused, I better change it to something more fitting. ‘Ace’, or ‘Rex’, perhaps?) into the base (Piper’s clearance apparently needed renewal) he walked by, noting various recruits engaged to the infirmary, noting the antiseptic smell and the spotless appearance. There were three Ms. Nannies and twelve human nurses present (one looked very cute), working under the stern eye of a blonde in a lab coat.
“What’s your business here?” she curtly asked. “This infirmary is for military personnel, not civilians – even if they’re veterans. You’ll have better luck in the general clinic.”
“It’s my dog,” he confessed. “He got badly injured, and I don’t want to put him down. Can you ... fix him?”
A pang of sympathy seemed to cross her face.
“We don’t have the facilities for that here. But if you leave him with me I’ll send him to Adams AFB on the next flight out and have him upgraded there. He’ll probably have a lifespan exceeding yours by the time we’re through with him. Nice present for the great-grandkids, no?”
There was another thing to ask. He knew the Government troops had been round to Vault 111 after he had left. If there was the ghost of a chance that … he would take it.
“In Vault 111,” he said, taking a deep breath. “You know that my wife was shot just before she was taken into cryo. Is there a possibility … ?”
The nurse’s face took on a look of severe disappointment, and Nate’s heart felt a bitter chill as he seemed to sense what she was going to say.
“It doesn’t work that way,” the nurse said. “I was part of the medical team that was sent into Vault 111 and … your wife was shot multiple times in the heart, lung and head with a .44 magnum. She was dead before the cryo kicked in. I’m … I’m awfully sorry for your loss. I can’t say any more.”
Tears ran down Nate’s cheek despite himself. Even if he found his son, even if he hadn’t been experimented on or mutated or God knows what … Nora was irrevocably gone to him. They would never be a family again together, at least in this world. After five or so minutes he took a deep breath, used a tissue that the nurse had given him to dry his eyes. There was still a nation to help rebuild; more than that, Shaun still needed rescuing.
He had to go on. It was what Nora would have wanted.
He left his dog there and went on to his main reason for going here. The main science laboratories weren’t far from the infirmary and he got there relatively quickly. There he found Whitley’s office and knocked hard three times on the door.
The balding scientist quickly arrived and opened the door, before sitting on his swivel chair and finishing what he’d been working on with his computer. Nate noted with astonishment that he was using a keyboard and some kind of tracking device to manipulate a graphical user interface. That sort of thing had only been floated around in science magazines back before the War.
Whitley seemed to notice his surprise and turned round on his swivel chair.
“Like what you see Nate? What you’re seeing right now is the bleeding edge of computer science. The old command-line interfaces will be obsolete soon – they’re all going to be phased out.”
He seemed somewhat sad about that.
“Uh ... well, impressive.”
“Heh, I know you’re too surprised to give a real response. But I don’t think you’re here to be looking at tech, now? What’s your real reason?”
Nate took out the piece of Kellogg’s brain. Whitley blanched at the sight.
“What on God’s good earth is that?!”
“The hippocampus of a mercenary who was working with the Institute, augmented with some kind of external memory storage. I think it might still contain his memories – including how to get in.”
“Joey, come here! Daddy wants you to take a look at something one of his friends brought him.”
An eyebot idly hovering in the corner enthusiastically blipped and beeped before scanning Nate and the grisly object he was holding. After the scan was complete, it gave a whine of frustration.
“It’s very strongly encrypted. Even with my upgrades, Joey can’t get anything out of it.”
“Damn! I need to get into the Institute to find my son.”
“Your son?”
“They ... they kidnapped him when he was a baby. My wife was killed trying to hold onto him.”
Even now, bringing it up still hurt. Bitter tears once more flowed from his eyes. Clinging to that hope more than a month had made it even worse when it was dashed.
Whitley looked pale.
“Well, we do have a possibility.”
“For God’s sake tell me what it is!”
“We could theoretically use a simulation pod to project the memories inside as a VR environment and thus bypass the encryption. Regrettably I don’t know of any simulation pods aside from the ones we recovered from Vault 112, and they’re military-only. Used for pilot training as I understand.”
The memory den in Goodneighbour, Nate thought. I’ll go there with Nick and see if it works. It has to.
“I think I might know of simulation pods present in Boston.”
“Good,” Whitley said. “By the way – if you find out how to enter the Institute, do tell us everything you learn. We have our own reasons for wanting to know how to get in.”
“God bless you,” Nate said as he prepared to head back to Sanctuary for the night.
“Godspeed.”
==*==
The cold air hit Arcade Gannon hard as the APC opened up and the occupants prepared to get out. They were seven in total – Arcade, Dr. Henry, two former combat medics, two civilian doctors, and a Ms. Nanny medical robot. He got out, passed the statue of a baseball player at the entrance, and spoke into the intercom.
“This is Dr. Arcade Gannon, Eastern Star Medical and Emergency Relief Organisation. We’re here to set up a clinic in town.”
“Mr. Beauregard said to expect you. He’ll be waiting at the entrance.”
The door opened, and the group met up with the official ambassador – well, officially consul – to Diamond City.
Beauregard was a tall, handsome and blond man dressed in a heavy black greatcoat with a Mr. Gutsy by his side and a laser rifle carried on his back. He certainly didn’t look like an ambassador, but Arcade had heard there’d been an assassination attempt and he guessed the US Government (was that what he was thinking of the Enclave as now? It was certainly what their radio station said they were over and over.) wanted to dissuade further attempts in future.
He made his introductions, shook Arcade’s hand, and led them to what would be their home for the foreseeable future.
It was a moderately large building located near the centre of town, with two stories (the staff slept above, downstairs was for the patients) and a spacious cellar holding a surgical theatre and the medicine storehouse. It was reasonably clean, but not up to the standards of the government hospitals in core NCR territory where Arcade had trained before heading over to Vegas. But then, those places had been for the middle class and above. Poor people subsisted on the Followers’ charity, or distressingly often, nothing at all. And with the pharmaceutical crisis that’d been brewing before he fled the NCR, he wasn’t sure if those places were still doing as well as they had been.
“How did you come by this place?” Arcade asked idly.
“I brought it. It cost twenty thousand caps, but that’s small change for us. Good time with the Mayor’s secretary too.”
Arcade just rolled his eyes at that. Hopefully the man wouldn’t brag about his conquests any more.
“How’d you get so many caps to spend?”
“The Department of the Treasury has the blueprints and the raw materials to build printing machines and make as many ‘genuine’ nuka-cola bottle caps as we want. Really useful for dealing with people who’re still convinced they’re real currency.”
“Wouldn’t that cause massive inflation as so many caps enter the market?”
“Exactly the intent. You see, from our perspective it’s just another incentive to make people go back to good old US D. The cap inevitably suffers immense depreciation as the amount of people using it stays constant, while that of people using the dollar grows, avoiding inflation on that front. So people gain an additional reason to turn in their caps to the exchange programs we’ve set up. There are additional effects beyond our borders as caps circulate out of are territory … ones that are quite useful for reintegration purposes.”
It was ... logical, but it still felt heartless. At least it was better than what Arcade guessed the old Enclave’s solution to the same problem would have been. Forty years was a long time, but it still felt shocking that the Enclave could have reformed from its previous genocidal mania so quickly. And he was still suspicious that they hadn’t changed so much as it looked like they had.
==*==
REPORT ON UNIQUE SOCIAL, PHYSIOLOGICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF HOMO BRUTUS BOSTONII
From: Dr. Karen A. Lewis
To: Dr. Robert S. Whitley, Chief Scientific Adjunct to the Massachusetts Expedition
Thought For The Day: So long as one American lives, so does America.
This report details unique characteristics of the subspecies Homo Brutus Bostonii (the informal designation “super mutant” or “Boston super mutant” will be used from now on) for the purpose of:
A. More effectively eliminating the hostile sub-humans.
B. Increasing our understanding of FEV in hopes of meeting the Project’s original goals, as set by the pre-2077 researchers who first developed it.
First off: physiology. The Boston mutants share many physical similarities with their southern cousins, the extirpated breed of Vault 87 super mutants, including but not limited to:
A. Complete atrophy of all sexual characteristics. Boston mutants possess no primary, secondary or tertiary sexual features and are to all intents and purposes sexless.
B. Continued growth throughout life, culminating in a gargantuan “Behemoth” stage.
C. Lesser intellect, higher than the Vault 87 breed but lower than Mariposa-strain mutants.
Genetic analysis of the FEV strains involved also seems to bear this out, though my results are still inconclusive. Autopsy and vivisection has also established similarities between the two strains (if only we had more records on the Mariposa strain for proper analysis!)
The Boston mutants’ diet is that of an obligate carnivore. They seem to have little qualms about what they eat, and commonly engage in cannibalism. This seems to be the impetus behind their constant raids on pure-strain human outposts and settlements.
Socially, they have established a clear chain of command and dominance-based social structure. Older and thus stronger mutants dominate the weaker ones and thus rule – at least until they reach Behemoth state, their minds atrophy, and they lose all social status. Psychologically, they are driven by a perception of themselves as superior mixed with self-hatred which causes them to lash out at pure-strain humanity – they take out their hatred on themselves from existing towards us, which they express in their ultra-violence and tendency for cannibal feasts. In some way their extirpation will be a mercy killing.
As for their makers – on each and every super mutant I’ve cut apart, whether dead or in vivo, some kind of device has been found implanted in the back of the neck. I’ve sent samples to you for study, as whoever implanted these would seem to be the creators of the Boston super mutants. This is concerning, as whoever is creating these beings must have access to significant supplies of FEV – a highly dangerous mutagen and bioweapon is no small concern. Pre-War records have not helped us to narrow it down, as the FEV Project’s paper trail on the Eastern Seaboard has not survived the passage of time.
Tactically, their increased intellect helps them make common use of traps and more advanced tactics than the Vault 87 mutants. A common tactic seems to be that regular mutants pin down enemy forces while specialised “suicide” mutants flank, reach melee range, and detonate themselves with a mini-nuke. Shamefully, this tactic has cost some of our soldiers their lives, as they were underestimated their enemies and did not think much of “smart mutants”. Land mines and IEDs have also been used by them, resulting in injuries, some requiring amputation while we wait for more cybernetic shipments to arrive (without power armour most of these casualties would have been killed instantly).
As for numbers – we estimate 20,000 at maximum, but highly divided. They could overwhelm out local forces at the present time if they managed to unify – perish the thought! - and even divided represent the largest current threat towards the reclamation and reintegration of the Greater Boston Area.
God Bless America.
==*==
Major Campbell was not impressed by what he saw before him as he entered Fort Independence. The local militia were in threadbare outfits of grey or butternut – a few in proper fatigues scavenged from old military facilities – and there were only a few of them. Dozens, a hundred at best. He’d heard reports that there were approximately 5,000, but for the most part these were right now in their various homesteads and farming settlements. And their weapons! – they used shotguns and hunting rifles, a few with select-fire rifles, but the most common gun was some kind of bashed-together laser rifle which fired slowly but had stopping power enough to take out a super mutant in one hit.
The Patriot took a three-round burst to do so, but it fired faster anyway. Not that the new gun introduced to the US military earlier in the decade was much better than the AER9 – the thing had been designed by eggheads who’d never been within a dozen klicks of shots being fired. Lots of fancy settings, but half of them aren’t worth shit in a firefight, and the dials keep breaking off. It was slightly more powerful in that it fired in the orange portion of the visual spectrum – a 10% or 15% boost in killing power. He wasn't sure that had been worth moving to replace the AER9 with it.
Part of him wondered why the US Government even bothered with these locals. Local militia, paramilitary forces and mercenaries were often essential to reintegrating an area – they could be used for tasks the Army’s actual manpower wasn’t worth being spent on, while eventually being groomed into becoming part of that same force. Back in DC two merc units, Talon Company and Reilly’s Rangers, had been helpful in securing the rear areas during wars with the Brotherhood and the super mutants before eventually being integrated completely into the regular US Army.
It had been very touch-and-go in the beginning of those days, back in ‘77. The number of Americans who held true loyalty to the government had been some 20,000 at most. Many of them had been Vault Dwellers who’d been brought along during the Exodus or incorporated after it took place - Campbell himself had been from Vault 18. One of the largest Vaults constructed, in North California, it had housed 5,000 civilians before it had been evacuated and had its entrance blown in back in ‘46. Campbell had been a young boy then – he remembered his old terror as he looked on the overwhelming vistas of the sun and the blue sky, and had felt an overwhelming urge to run back into the cave where the Vault’s entrance had been located. Together with every last base the people at Navarro could contact, there had been 2,000 fighting men available at DC.
That was all the soldiers America had possessed at that point in time. If the Federal Government had lost then, coming back from such a defeat would have been unimaginable. But Autumn had led them to victory after victory, their numbers swelling with each city-state and settlement brought back into the fold. The US was there again to stay, at least down south. But up here, it was still touch-and-go.
He guessed that was why this militia were being treated as allies. The Army and Marine Corps needed all the help they could get down here, and – well, Campbell had heard the rumours about the commander of these particular forces. Claims that he was a pre-War military officer somehow impossibly preserved. At the least, he had the ear of the President, and that meant something. The man had an undoubted eye for talent – Walker, Holt, Stiggs, Richardson, and more. Campbell sighed as he talked to the man’s 2IC – a dark-skinned man, name Preston Garvey, likeable enough. He would make the estimates of how much materiel these folk needed and send them on to Rhonda – the girl had a good head for organisation.
These people would certainly need a lot of it to be worthwhile.
==*==
MEMO: INSTITUTE INFILTRATORS IN ARMED FORCES
From: Doctor Robert S. Whitley
To: President Augustus Autumn, Colonel Daniel Bradley, Admiral David Keller
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Merely to survive is never enough.
I’m concerned about possible Institute infiltration – using their androids designed specifically to pass as human. While they’re unable to make a direct insertion into our bases – the security systems we have are more than sufficient to proof against that, and the chances of infiltrators being among the forces sent to Boston are infinitesimal – I’m worried that they could be along the natives we are presently recruiting at Lexington. As I’ve got no test capable of weeding out androids from humans – not one applicable to a large population, at any rate – I recommend caution when dealing with the new recruits. Perhaps we could deny them promotion above a certain rank or deployment to sensitive sites until the business we have with C.I.T. is concluded? I think caution is definitely called for here.
God Bless America.
-*-
RE: INSTITUTE INFILTRATORS IN ARMED FORCES
From: President Augustus Autumn
To: Dr. Robert S. Whitley, Chief Scientific Adjunct to the Massachusetts Expedition
Have set new policies in place dealing with the issue.
P.S. You’re overdue on the feasibility study re: applying stealth fields to vertibirds and other aircraft. Me and General Duplessis are still waiting, and she’s less patient than I am.
==*==
Some people called him Blackheart. Others called him Bloody Joe. Many more called him Mad Jack, but never when they thought he could hear them. He’d led his gang on dozens of raids from New Haven to Plymouth Rock, and dozens more farms and settlements paid him regular tribute to keep him away. They gave him their food, their water and their women and in return he made sure other people stayed well enough away.
He looked at the pathetic wretch before him, idly waiting for him to speak.
“You said you’re from Boston, right?”
“Yeah, I am,” the teenager desperately said. He was barely old enough to grow a beard, with a shrimpish physique that Jack gave an undisguised sneer at. “All the big shots there are going down. Jared, Slag, Tower Tom, Sully Mathis – they’re all getting wasted one by one. I’m the last survivor of Red Tourette’s gang myself.”
“What happened to Red Tourette?”
“We were chilling at home base after a raid for supplies, when suddenly this big fucking siren started sounding above us. Then these motherfuckers in power armour just fell out of the sky around us and started shooting up the place. There were lasers and grenades fucking everywhere, and that plasma shit as well. One of our guys put on a suit of power armour, but they just fried him with a motherfucking lightning gun.”
“I only survived ‘cause a grenade shockwave knocked me out and sent me into the latrine ditch. After I came to I checked the bunker, but they’d used some kind of flamethrower to smoke the folks there out. Everybody had either burned up or choked to death.”
“After that I just got the fuck out of Boston.”
Mad Jack seemed to be mulling over the situation.
“I think I know who the fuck this is,” he said plainly. “It’s the motherfuckers that set up that damn fucking radio station, call themselves the fucking Government and want to muscle us the fuck out. We’ve all gotta join together or die. Hang together, or hang separately. They'll start in Boston, but before long they'll be wiping gangs out across all of New fucking England.”
“This is what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna gather up every gang from Rhode Island, Cape Cod, Boston and Massachusetts. Then I’m gonna make war on these fuckheads and send them crying back to their mommies in Washington town. And then, I’ll make sure no-one messes with us ever again!”
That was that for the planning of this particular campaign.
The assembled raiders whooped and cheered, firing weapons into the air.
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Crow gotta eat
That peckish, patriotic, Protestant passerine.
Nice to see this continuing to be updated. I remember reading the first version.
Seems to be a leftover "[/QUOTE]" here which I bolded here. Had to take off the "]" on it for the actual quote work and show where it is.
These quotes, sort of sound contradictory, with Nate saying that he already calls him Ace to then apparently trying to decide in his head whether to change Dogmeat's name to either Ace or Rex from Dogmeat.
Navarro
Well-known member
Yep. There are some changes that lead in to alterations to the final battle, if you know where to look (plus an F:NC reference lol).
" here which I bolded here. Had to take off the "]" on it for the actual quote work and show where it is.[/QUOTE]
Thanks.
Silly me, know I shouldn't have waited so long ...
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The Real Lee
Member
Yes! An update! Great chapter as usual. I always love a chance to catch up with Arcade, his view of the resurgent America is always interesting, along with the other remnants though we seldom see the others.
Chapter Eleven
New
Navarro
Well-known member
Thanks Emil!
==*==
Chapter 11
Mad Jack looked on the assembling groups at his camp. He'd sent out the messages far and wide, and raider bands,one by one, were flowing in to the encampment. There were the Speed Freaks, with motorbikes by the score; there were the Battle Boys, mouths foaming and eyes watery from chem overuse with every square inch of their skin tattooed; there were the Atomic Bombers with gamma guns, nuka grenades and even a few nuclear rocket launchers; there were the Road Warriors with dozens of souped-up old world cars, trucks and technicals, and dozens more flowing in by the day. Last but certainly not least were the Ironskins, who all wore power armour scavenged from some old army depot. And more raiders were joining by the day. If we don't do this, Mad Jack thought, they'll just take us all down one by one, but ifwe unite together, maybe we stand a chance.
"This is the plan," Mad Jack said to the assembled leaders. "We move into Boston, we set up shop nearby, and we get the Gunners on board. Fuckers have almost as much firepower as all of us combined. Then we attack Lexington and the Minutemen's pansy-ass "Castle" all at once, take them during the night. Finally, we take down these fuckers' big fucking boat. Then we feast, take the spoils, enjoy the women, and set ourselves as kings of the fucking hill round these parts. You all hear me?"
"What if the Gunners won't join up?" one of the other leaders asked.
"Then we keep with the other phases of the fucking plan, you motherfucking idiot! The "Castle" is an old ruin from
six hundred fucking years ago, we can take it easily. As for Lexington? Apparently the fuckers set up there have some kind of fucking forcefield shit and can tame motherfucking deathclaws. So they say so on their radio station, at least. My guess is that it's all just a big fucking bluff."
"If you think so, boss."
==*==
Colonel John Kendall looked at his new command vehicle, fresh off the Lexington assembly line, and smiled. The M-75 Custer Main Battle Tank was a wonder of design. Slightly larger than pre-War tanks, it ran on a fusion power plant capable of lasting three months before needing a coolant refill, and its duraframe-ceramic composite armour could handle almost any pre-War AT munitions. Its main armament was a fusion beam cannon with two Gatling lasers (one pintle-mounted, the other co-axial) for anti-personnel work. The only flaw was that its weapons were line-of-sight only, but the point was not to rely on still-weak supply lines.
A damn sight improvement, he mused¸over that 'Super Sherman' I was in at Pittsburgh. The WW2-era designs had been something meant to be used on the cheap, but these were real fighting machines. He sighed. He guessed he was used to tight spaces; he'd been Vault 101 Security before the Federals recruited him – a lot of the higher ups, if they hadn't been Government people from the start, were Vaulters. That kid Butch, he was in charge of his own battalion now – he'd even named it the 'Tunnel Snakes' after his old gang, and his rival, that-
He didn't want to think about that man, He'd murdered the Overseer on his way out, and there was no way 101 would ever forget that. He was surprised he hadn't killed the President, to be true. But perhaps the President scared him too much – he'd heard of the man, while he was still fighting the war in Washington, interrogating Brotherhood prisoners personally and shooting them as traitors himself once he was done – not to mention the execution of the Paradise Falls ringleaders under the judgemental eyes of Abe Lincoln himself, blasting off their heads with their own bomb collars. The slaver chieftain Eulogy Jones, meriting special attention, had been thrown off the roof for a jubilant public. Kendall had seen that, and he'd never forget the sight. Those slavers had sure had it coming though, at any rate. The President had definitely softened over the years though – children to dote on, a loving wife to support him, a nation that needed to look up to him had all helped do the trick. But still, Kendall was under no illusions that the old steel was still under the surface, only biding its time.
==*==
Taylor Larson looked over his sketches and smiled. With Lexington resettled and reasonably secure, he'd been hired to design buildings for the rebuilding of Washington. With his CV as a retired combat engineer and architect of the Capital Wasteland Museum, it'd been no surprise he landed the contract.
Personally he thought his best achievement was the new Supreme Court building. The austere Doric columns were a particularly nice touch, but the cherry on top was the gilded statue of Lady Justice before the colonnade, which he'd modelled after Caroline Autumn herself. That'd be sure to get the President looking favourably on him, no doubt.
Idly he turned on his radio.
"That was the brand new "Ballad of Fort Navarro" by everyone's favourite filly from Philly, Heidi Jackson," the announcer rattled off (he'd not really been the same since the Moreno interview). "And speaking of Philadelphia, the magrail line recently finished between Washington D.C. and the city of brotherly love has begun operation today. Freight and passengers will now travel with fusion-powered, magnetically-levitated speed between the two cities in just thirty minutes ..."
The news about Navarro, though it'd inspired what was sure to be the singer's latest radio hit, had been a big blow to the original personnel, and Larson especially. All of them had friends and family there, and they'd been holding out hope since Chicago that somehow it'd survived. No such luck. NCR had taken the base, and even worse they'd manage to capture the vertibirds there. The only silver lining was that they'd then fallen out with their partners in crime, the Brotherhood of Steel, over the spoils, and had bled hard fighting them by all accounts.
Let the traitors kill each other, Larson mused grimly. When we come back to California we'll give 'em both more firepower than they know how to handle.
-*-
Arcade Gannon passed an architect's office as he walked to one of the logistics people's office. He took a chance to read the nameplate, taking in a deep breath – SSGT. RHONDA RICHARDSON. He had a bad feeling about this.
"Hello, Mr. …", the woman said, blushing and failing to hide a smile. Had he been interested in women, he'd have found her just on the indefinable line between "pretty" and "beautiful". As it was, she didn't really stand out that much to him … apart from … is she really? It has to be a common name, right?
"Arcade Gannon, Ma'am. I need medical supplies to help set up my clinic."
"Yes," she said. "I've heard of yours and Dr. Henry's plan. Can't believe the man's a real vet from when we were just reclaiming the mainland."
So definitely an original Enclave family. Can it really- best cut short that line of thinking.
"I'm flattered. But concerning the shipments."
"It'll have to be delayed," she said with a sigh. "The big raider gangs are gathering to take us on, all incoming medical supplies have been reserved for the army for the time being. Should have known we'd stir up the nest. I guess that's what we have to expect. When my great-grandfather – he was the President of this country, you know – started to link up the bases and begin restoring order on the West Coast-"
He took a deep breath. It really was the case. The woman – smiling, pleasant, something of a chatterbox, proud of her family history – was a direct descendant of the dictator, the genocidal maniac, the mass murderer blown up by Mingan, the Chosen One of Arroyo, on that oil rig. For a moment, he felt a pulse in his gut. He wanted to rant at her about the crimes of her family, run away into the wilds away from this authoritarian state and this revision of history and this, this, this …
He couldn't do any of that. How long would he really last on his own in the wild? Wasn't this giving him the opportunity to help the wasteland's downtrodden like in Freeside? Wouldn't he foregoing the sanctuary he'd been offered from the NCR, its bounty hunters and Rangers? Wouldn't he be abandoning the only friends he had left? The calculus wasn't so simple in the end.
"Thanks, Ms. Richardson," he found up the courage to stutter – not caring if the girl thought his sudden heavy breathing and flushness and tripping over his words and all the other symptoms of anxiety came from quite another place.
"I presume you'll inform me when the situation changes?"
==*==
REPORT ON THE FLORIDA SITUATION
From: Lt. Liam Walker, Army Special Forces 2nd Platoon, "The Black Devils"
To: General Robert G. Henshaw, Sky Marshal Mary Duplessis, President Augustus Autumn, Secretary of Foreign Affairs Loretta Andrews, Secretary of War Alexis Valentine
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Removing weeds is easy enough, but growing a garden is hard work.
This field report on the Cape Canaveral Spaceport and the wider situation in Florida, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean is classified TOP SECRET.
We've done well in our mission down south here. The outpost at Cape Canaveral is well-established, and with the winter here even Special Agent Fawkes isn't minding the heat that much.
The Canaveral situation is a mixed bag. While the control centre is fine and the launching pads are still salvageable, the main plasma fuel storage depot is completely gone and the area is now a radiological hazard zone. The refinery is untouched though, but it hasn't been maintained for two hundred years.
The inventory of spacecraft is decent, though all of them will need arduous repair before we can get them to work. There are about ten spaceplanes, six shuttles, and one lunar transitcraft still in a halfway salvageable state. The rest will have to be scrapped for parts.
There's also a crawler-transporter similar to the one stationed at Adams AFB. It should be easy enough to repair and reconfigure into a mobile base as we did with the one we first arrived at D.C. in. The spaceport's automatic defences are still functioning, and would have caused us a lot of trouble if we didn't still use the pre-War IFFs.
The Floridian situation is much better. I've made friendly contact with two local settlements – Orlando and Epcot City. Orlando is a typical wasteland city state – poor and lawless, with a limited supply of food and fresh water, the works. Epcot City is a much bigger prize. The inhabitants (estimated at 15,000) are descendants of residents of Vault 82 – a control Vault built as the result of a corporate manoeuvre between Vault-Tec and the old Disney Corporation, beneath the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow constructed in the 1970s – and as a result will make very good military recruits and skilled labour for our purposes. I could very well do with a diplomat or two to smooth out the peaceful reintegration procedure I recommend for the settlements.
As for the south of Florida, it seems to be bad. Tampa has been taken over by pirates infesting the region, Miami is impoverished and sends regular tribute to the pirates, and the less said about the Florida Keys the better. The Everglades are apparently infested with mutated predatory plants and animals, including "man-eating mutant manatees" to use a local turn of phrase.
The north of Florida? Apparently St. Augustine is a popular stopping point on a major caravan route that goes from the NCR to Boston. If we could nab one of their traders there the intelligence potential is immense. Besides that, just the typical Wasteland settlements and townships, with massive swathes of kudzu covering up what could be prime farmland.
The Caribbean situation is where our Navy can really shine. The whole place is crawling with pirates based in a number of locations. The most major is New Tortuga on Hispaniola, with Port Royal in Jamaica a close second. I recommend sending our submarines once we have them finished and properly crewed to first hunt down the pirate ships, then blow their harbours to Hell with cruise missiles. Then we can move towards diplomatic or military integration (as circumstances require) of Cuba and Puerto Rico, former US territories we'd do well to get back in the fold (speaking of submarines, I got a signature that seemed to be a pre-War Chinese boomer heading southward past Florida on November 8th. Cause for concern?). I need not mention how important control of the Caribbean is to retaking the Panama and Nicaragua Canals, and hence to our long-term strategic goals on the West Coast (not to mention establishing a presence in the Gulf).
God Bless America.
-*-
Dear Lucy
I hate to be away from you, but my work at [REDACTED] will soon be done. Once regular Army troops start deploying at our base there I can go back and spend some time with you before we have to go into another warzone (hopefully a long while). How're Davis and James doing? Last letter from you they were scuffling all the time, hopefully you've knocked some sense into them. Twins shouldn't be squabbling like that. I wish I was able to be with you more, but orders are orders.
Merry Christmas, with much love
Liam Walker
==*==
Goodneighbor hadn't changed much since the US Government had arrived, save for the constant roar of vertibird engines. They were heard all over Boston now, and Nate had no doubt raiders and super mutants were learning to fear that sound. With an assaultron and a hardened private eyeright behind him, he was sure he could take on the local toughs if he had to.
The three headed to the Memory Den briskly, checking in to Amari. Hopefully she had a fitting body for Kleo to inhabit.
"How's it going Amari?" the combat robot asked in that oddly seductive synthesised tone. "Found a female body formy consciousness to inhabit, baby?"
"Yes," she said, "She's in the basement."
They quickly went down to the basement and Nate took a glance at what was to be the Assaultron's new physical form. It was a woman in her twenties with sandy blonde hair – done up in a ponytail – wearing a leather jacket and jeans. Amari adjusted the wires and checked the equipment one final time before pressing her hand down on the lever.
"Are you ready Kleo?" she asked. "Once I transfer your consciousness I will not be able to reverse it, no matter what I do."
"I'm ready as ever, baby."
"Okay, then."
She pulled the lever and the assaultron body dropped lifelessly to the ground. The figure lying in the memory pod, however, woke up and breathed hard, opening her grey eyes.
"You okay, Kleo?"
"So many new feelings!" she said confusedly, putting her hand to her forehead. "Heat, cold, touch, smell – my old form had analogues, but nothing like this. The only thing I miss is the beam projector in my forehead. It was so useful for eliminating hostiles."
"You'll manage," Nate said. "Curie had trouble walking the first few days. Wasn't adjusted to a humanoid body plan, you see."
"Well then," Amari said. "Done here?" "Not exactly," Nate said, turning to the good Doctor. "I have something for you to look at, related to my son's disappearance. Nick's already filled you into the details about that, I guess?"
"Yes, but- Dear God! Was that implant part of some man's brain?!"
"Yes, it was. Belonged to a mercenary called Kellogg, the one who kidnapped my son. We think he might have known how to get into the Institute. But I'm not sure myself how that's gonna help."
"It's similar to devices implanted into synths," she said, looking over it. "Intended to translate organic perceptions into permanent machine records based on quantum computing devices similar to those used in artificial intelligence. Hmm ... encrypted beyond these machines' abilities to decipher by themselves. But – all Institute technology is also cross-compatible. Mr. Valentine can host Kellogg's memories while you explore them inside the machine."
"Any side effects?"
"You might gain some minor tics at minimum. Perhaps Kellogg had a particular taste for a certain type of alcohol – that tendency of his might rub off on you. Alteration to your personality should be minor, though we've never done this before. We have no idea what the full risks could be."
"I'll risk it," Nate said. "Anything to find my son."
Amari readjusted the wires and gently guided Kleo out of the memory pod so Nate could enter. Then, he entered in and she activated the pod, securely strapping him in and connecting the neural interface cables before closing it. The screen lit up and began to show static, and Nate's vision was consumed by a blinding white light.
==*==
REPORT ON VAULT 81
From: Dr. Edward Cody
To: Dr. Robert S. Whitley, Chief Scientific Adjunct to the Massachusetts Expedition
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: The strongest man in the world is powerless if he has a weak will.
The Vault 81 insertion was an unqualified success. While the President was making a speech to the assembled residents of the Vault, several Secret Service troopers and my good self entered the "unofficial" areas of the Vault to see if the experiment carried out there had achieved anything. To our surprise, it had actually worked out rather well. While all the mole rats used as test subjects had been killed (presumably by Vault 81 security) we managed to find a back-up drive for the Ms. Nanny designated CVRIE and various (decayed) samples of a chemical I have officially dubbed "Panacea" for its remarkable properties. While the robot was absent (no clue where it went – still, sending a military force across Boston after one missing robot is a fool's errand) we have samples of Panacea and various of the robot's research notes.
What does this mean for us, Dr. Whitley? Very much. Panacea is a surefire cure for 99.9% of all bacterial and viral diseases. Our medical logistics will be vastly simplified once we have a number of factories producing the product. Also, Panacea will make a very appealing carrot for our diplomats to dangle in front of native leaders. We are talking about something that could shave off the projected time to reintegrate the entire East Coast by as much as a decade. I've already sent samples ahead to our science teams at the Adams AFB crawler-transporter. The only thing bad about this situation is that this is the only good thing the old social experiments gave us, if you don't count the pods we scavenged from Vault 112.
God Bless America.
==*==
It took an instant for the machine to link between Nate's own consciousness and those of Kellogg, crystallised into recordings by man-machine interface, but it felt like an eternity. He saw flashes of his own memories – of war on the bloody ice of Anchorage, the moment he kissed Betty (or was it Nora) – and then … it was that Canadian town, executing the insurgent, last survivor of his cell that had faked their surrenders to get close enough to his unit to detonate the explosives they had on them, but the commander of the cell hadn't had the nerve to go through, so he'd ordered (was ordering) the man killed on the spot simply out of anger and disgust for the good men under him that'd died, and then the press corps had turned up last minute and shot (were shooting) the whole affair as a feel-good moment for the people back home, and he'd just laughed (was laughing) at the absurdity of it all-
He was launched out of the nightmare memory and into a dark void, standing on a glowing bridge of neural synapses. This was the machine's best effort to translate the broken, scrambled and decaying memories of the mercenary Kellogg into a form he could comprehend – still, it scared him. Exploring his own memories had been safe, if painful, but exploring another's was an altogether alien experience.
"You will be experiencing these memories as Kellogg," Amari's hazy, static-tinged voice said from the world outside the virtual reality created by the pod. "As a result, you will experience some confusion."
He walked forward, towards what looked like a child's bedroom floating in space, and then-
-He was sitting on the bed, Ma (not my Mom, his) looking over him thoughtfully. The radio was giving some kind of news about an election or something, he couldn't hear the details. And then he turned over to (his) Mom and talked.
"My schoolteacher, she said NCR was going to fix everything up, make it like before the big war," he said.
"Connie," (his) Mom said. "Don't you believe what that damn fool radio tells you, or your schoolteacher either. She feeds you any more of that pie-in-the-sky nonsense; I'll stop sending you there. The only thing that's going to protect you in this world is this gun here."
She took it out from underneath her blouse, showed it to him. A .44 Magnum, her (Kellogg's) weapon.
"Go on," she went on. "Take it. You're old enough for it. You've gotta be the man of the house now, since your (his) pappa's such a deadbeat."
He took it in his hand, heard (Kellogg's) father banging on the door and shouting, and then-
The room emptied, and he was Nate again. The memory had run out, and another bridge glimmered before him, leading him onward.
He took it and was in a living room. A young woman, (Kellogg's) wife stood before him, while (Kellogg's) baby was in a cot, sleeping peacefully. In the living room window, the Golden Gate Bridge floated in the dark void of space.
"So, Connie," Sarah said. "I hope it's better here than the Hub."
"It is, Sarah," (Kellogg) said. "We have a house here and I've already got a job. Things are going to be fine."
"What's the job?"
"Running security for the Shi. It's nothing serious, just a lot of standing around and looking tough. Before long I'll have enough money to start my own outfit. Things'll be great."
"I hope so," Sarah said, then the memory ended again, and Nate went on.
A street in San Francisco. Some kind of celebration was happening, people were cheering and whooping. A young child grabbed Kellogg's hand.
"Isn't it great, Mister?" The child asked. "They blew up the Enclave! We won't have to worry about those bad guys no more!"
Suddenly Kellogg heard a man's voice and turned to face him.
"You won't be glad to hear this," he said. "But you messed with us too many times, Mr. Conrad Kellogg. As a result, my associates decided to pay a visit to your wife and child while you were "running security". I'm sure you'll be glad to hear that they died very. Fucking. Slowly. And you weren't there to help them one bit."
Kellogg drew his pistol and fired a round straight into the man's head. As if in slow motion, he saw the bullet penetrate his head and send it flying in pieces like a smashed watermelon. Blood, brain, bits of bone, eyes falling to the ground like grapes – every nauseating detail. And then, he turned, ran, and-
The street emptied. The revellers, the child, the crime boss – all gone. Just Nate in an empty San Francisco street, wondering what had happened to give the US Government such a bad rep back west. Deciding that such questions were unimportant, he carried on into the next intact memory.
The first thing that hit him was the smell – a mix of gunpowder, alcohol and cigarette smoke as strong as it was unpleasant. A super mutant's head was mounted over the bar and the radio was playing some ugly late-20th century music that Nate recognised as an old genre called "metal". Frankly, even this brief snippet - heard secondhand at that - was distasteful enough
"So, Kellogg, you up for the job?" Kellogg's client asked.
"Depends how much you have to offer," Kellogg said.
"Five hundred caps, and not those shitty Guarana ones either. Ya see, there's a lawman up from the Lone Star Republic meddling in my business, and I want ya to deal with him. Typical Austin city-slicker, ya know?"
"I'm not from around here."
"No biggie. All ya need to do is go ten miles west to Amarillo and make sure he gets a nice quick real-estate deal. And please – try and make it look like an accident. I don't want no Texas Rangers getting all over my business, ya see?"
"I'll do it."
Then the memory faded and Nate kept on, leaving the Texan bar behind and heading to what looked like a warehouse.
Three synths stood in front of Kellogg, skeletal androids made of plastic and metal. Before him a woman sat at a desk.
"Mr. Kellogg," she said. "You have caused a great deal of trouble for Institute operations in the Commonwealth. Your elimination from the equation is regret-"
The mercenary moved with lightning speed, instincts flying into motion. He used one synth as a shield and took down the other two, before unloading his .44 into his impromptu shield and scattering its mechanical brain all over the floor.
"You were saying?" he said as he levelled the gun at the Institute woman.
"I think you might well be useful to us," she said, unintimidated and seemingly impressed.
"How much you paying me?"
"As much as you want."
"What's the job?"
"We think you might like a permanent
position with us."
"I'll take it."
The memory ended and Nate went, right into a familiar scene. Dear God. This was ... he didn't want to relive it. The cryo room in Vault 111, with him and his wife in their pods. Nora was there, and Nate remembered – meeting her as a JAG, marrying her, Shaun's birth, and ... her murder. Now he was looking at it through the eyes of the murderer, as Kellogg struggled with her for the baby, took it from her and shot her straight in the chest.
The scene ended and Nate rushed ahead to the final memory, knowing he was at the end.
It was Kellogg's house in Diamond City. He was there with a boy – Nate's son Shaun, ten years old. Travis was on the radio, going over a news story with his old awkwardness. Then an Institute Courser appeared in a flash of light.
"Kellogg, you have been reassigned to a new mission," the Courser said, his words soft but spoken in a stony monotone. "Dr. Brian Virgil, a defector from the Institute who has fled to the Glowing Sea. Find him and eliminate him as a threat to the Institute by any means necessary."
"I will," Kellogg said. "And the boy?"
"He is to go back to the Director until your mission has been accomplished. Then the Director's experiment will resume as before. That is all you need to know."
The Courser grabbed the boy and held his hand roughly, before saying some co-ordinates. The two vanished in a flash of light and a pop of inrushing air. The memory ran out and the room turned empty. Nate heard Amari's voice again.
"We're taking you out of the VR construct now," she said. "Prepare for extraction in one, two, three!"
Nate's world dissolved to static, then he saw the basement where he'd been hooked up clear as day, his throat dry and his stomach empty.
"How long was I in there?" he asked.
"About three hours real time," Amari explained.
"Did you find out anything about the Institute?" Nick asked.
"They use some kind of teleportation to enter and leave their base," he said. "There's somebody who knows more – Brian Virgil, a scientist who defected from them. There's only one problem with getting to him."
"What's that?"
"He's in the Glowing Sea."
==*==
Chapter 11
Mad Jack looked on the assembling groups at his camp. He'd sent out the messages far and wide, and raider bands,one by one, were flowing in to the encampment. There were the Speed Freaks, with motorbikes by the score; there were the Battle Boys, mouths foaming and eyes watery from chem overuse with every square inch of their skin tattooed; there were the Atomic Bombers with gamma guns, nuka grenades and even a few nuclear rocket launchers; there were the Road Warriors with dozens of souped-up old world cars, trucks and technicals, and dozens more flowing in by the day. Last but certainly not least were the Ironskins, who all wore power armour scavenged from some old army depot. And more raiders were joining by the day. If we don't do this, Mad Jack thought, they'll just take us all down one by one, but ifwe unite together, maybe we stand a chance.
"This is the plan," Mad Jack said to the assembled leaders. "We move into Boston, we set up shop nearby, and we get the Gunners on board. Fuckers have almost as much firepower as all of us combined. Then we attack Lexington and the Minutemen's pansy-ass "Castle" all at once, take them during the night. Finally, we take down these fuckers' big fucking boat. Then we feast, take the spoils, enjoy the women, and set ourselves as kings of the fucking hill round these parts. You all hear me?"
"What if the Gunners won't join up?" one of the other leaders asked.
"Then we keep with the other phases of the fucking plan, you motherfucking idiot! The "Castle" is an old ruin from
six hundred fucking years ago, we can take it easily. As for Lexington? Apparently the fuckers set up there have some kind of fucking forcefield shit and can tame motherfucking deathclaws. So they say so on their radio station, at least. My guess is that it's all just a big fucking bluff."
"If you think so, boss."
==*==
Colonel John Kendall looked at his new command vehicle, fresh off the Lexington assembly line, and smiled. The M-75 Custer Main Battle Tank was a wonder of design. Slightly larger than pre-War tanks, it ran on a fusion power plant capable of lasting three months before needing a coolant refill, and its duraframe-ceramic composite armour could handle almost any pre-War AT munitions. Its main armament was a fusion beam cannon with two Gatling lasers (one pintle-mounted, the other co-axial) for anti-personnel work. The only flaw was that its weapons were line-of-sight only, but the point was not to rely on still-weak supply lines.
A damn sight improvement, he mused¸over that 'Super Sherman' I was in at Pittsburgh. The WW2-era designs had been something meant to be used on the cheap, but these were real fighting machines. He sighed. He guessed he was used to tight spaces; he'd been Vault 101 Security before the Federals recruited him – a lot of the higher ups, if they hadn't been Government people from the start, were Vaulters. That kid Butch, he was in charge of his own battalion now – he'd even named it the 'Tunnel Snakes' after his old gang, and his rival, that-
He didn't want to think about that man, He'd murdered the Overseer on his way out, and there was no way 101 would ever forget that. He was surprised he hadn't killed the President, to be true. But perhaps the President scared him too much – he'd heard of the man, while he was still fighting the war in Washington, interrogating Brotherhood prisoners personally and shooting them as traitors himself once he was done – not to mention the execution of the Paradise Falls ringleaders under the judgemental eyes of Abe Lincoln himself, blasting off their heads with their own bomb collars. The slaver chieftain Eulogy Jones, meriting special attention, had been thrown off the roof for a jubilant public. Kendall had seen that, and he'd never forget the sight. Those slavers had sure had it coming though, at any rate. The President had definitely softened over the years though – children to dote on, a loving wife to support him, a nation that needed to look up to him had all helped do the trick. But still, Kendall was under no illusions that the old steel was still under the surface, only biding its time.
==*==
Taylor Larson looked over his sketches and smiled. With Lexington resettled and reasonably secure, he'd been hired to design buildings for the rebuilding of Washington. With his CV as a retired combat engineer and architect of the Capital Wasteland Museum, it'd been no surprise he landed the contract.
Personally he thought his best achievement was the new Supreme Court building. The austere Doric columns were a particularly nice touch, but the cherry on top was the gilded statue of Lady Justice before the colonnade, which he'd modelled after Caroline Autumn herself. That'd be sure to get the President looking favourably on him, no doubt.
Idly he turned on his radio.
"That was the brand new "Ballad of Fort Navarro" by everyone's favourite filly from Philly, Heidi Jackson," the announcer rattled off (he'd not really been the same since the Moreno interview). "And speaking of Philadelphia, the magrail line recently finished between Washington D.C. and the city of brotherly love has begun operation today. Freight and passengers will now travel with fusion-powered, magnetically-levitated speed between the two cities in just thirty minutes ..."
The news about Navarro, though it'd inspired what was sure to be the singer's latest radio hit, had been a big blow to the original personnel, and Larson especially. All of them had friends and family there, and they'd been holding out hope since Chicago that somehow it'd survived. No such luck. NCR had taken the base, and even worse they'd manage to capture the vertibirds there. The only silver lining was that they'd then fallen out with their partners in crime, the Brotherhood of Steel, over the spoils, and had bled hard fighting them by all accounts.
Let the traitors kill each other, Larson mused grimly. When we come back to California we'll give 'em both more firepower than they know how to handle.
-*-
Arcade Gannon passed an architect's office as he walked to one of the logistics people's office. He took a chance to read the nameplate, taking in a deep breath – SSGT. RHONDA RICHARDSON. He had a bad feeling about this.
"Hello, Mr. …", the woman said, blushing and failing to hide a smile. Had he been interested in women, he'd have found her just on the indefinable line between "pretty" and "beautiful". As it was, she didn't really stand out that much to him … apart from … is she really? It has to be a common name, right?
"Arcade Gannon, Ma'am. I need medical supplies to help set up my clinic."
"Yes," she said. "I've heard of yours and Dr. Henry's plan. Can't believe the man's a real vet from when we were just reclaiming the mainland."
So definitely an original Enclave family. Can it really- best cut short that line of thinking.
"I'm flattered. But concerning the shipments."
"It'll have to be delayed," she said with a sigh. "The big raider gangs are gathering to take us on, all incoming medical supplies have been reserved for the army for the time being. Should have known we'd stir up the nest. I guess that's what we have to expect. When my great-grandfather – he was the President of this country, you know – started to link up the bases and begin restoring order on the West Coast-"
He took a deep breath. It really was the case. The woman – smiling, pleasant, something of a chatterbox, proud of her family history – was a direct descendant of the dictator, the genocidal maniac, the mass murderer blown up by Mingan, the Chosen One of Arroyo, on that oil rig. For a moment, he felt a pulse in his gut. He wanted to rant at her about the crimes of her family, run away into the wilds away from this authoritarian state and this revision of history and this, this, this …
He couldn't do any of that. How long would he really last on his own in the wild? Wasn't this giving him the opportunity to help the wasteland's downtrodden like in Freeside? Wouldn't he foregoing the sanctuary he'd been offered from the NCR, its bounty hunters and Rangers? Wouldn't he be abandoning the only friends he had left? The calculus wasn't so simple in the end.
"Thanks, Ms. Richardson," he found up the courage to stutter – not caring if the girl thought his sudden heavy breathing and flushness and tripping over his words and all the other symptoms of anxiety came from quite another place.
"I presume you'll inform me when the situation changes?"
==*==
REPORT ON THE FLORIDA SITUATION
From: Lt. Liam Walker, Army Special Forces 2nd Platoon, "The Black Devils"
To: General Robert G. Henshaw, Sky Marshal Mary Duplessis, President Augustus Autumn, Secretary of Foreign Affairs Loretta Andrews, Secretary of War Alexis Valentine
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Removing weeds is easy enough, but growing a garden is hard work.
This field report on the Cape Canaveral Spaceport and the wider situation in Florida, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean is classified TOP SECRET.
We've done well in our mission down south here. The outpost at Cape Canaveral is well-established, and with the winter here even Special Agent Fawkes isn't minding the heat that much.
The Canaveral situation is a mixed bag. While the control centre is fine and the launching pads are still salvageable, the main plasma fuel storage depot is completely gone and the area is now a radiological hazard zone. The refinery is untouched though, but it hasn't been maintained for two hundred years.
The inventory of spacecraft is decent, though all of them will need arduous repair before we can get them to work. There are about ten spaceplanes, six shuttles, and one lunar transitcraft still in a halfway salvageable state. The rest will have to be scrapped for parts.
There's also a crawler-transporter similar to the one stationed at Adams AFB. It should be easy enough to repair and reconfigure into a mobile base as we did with the one we first arrived at D.C. in. The spaceport's automatic defences are still functioning, and would have caused us a lot of trouble if we didn't still use the pre-War IFFs.
The Floridian situation is much better. I've made friendly contact with two local settlements – Orlando and Epcot City. Orlando is a typical wasteland city state – poor and lawless, with a limited supply of food and fresh water, the works. Epcot City is a much bigger prize. The inhabitants (estimated at 15,000) are descendants of residents of Vault 82 – a control Vault built as the result of a corporate manoeuvre between Vault-Tec and the old Disney Corporation, beneath the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow constructed in the 1970s – and as a result will make very good military recruits and skilled labour for our purposes. I could very well do with a diplomat or two to smooth out the peaceful reintegration procedure I recommend for the settlements.
As for the south of Florida, it seems to be bad. Tampa has been taken over by pirates infesting the region, Miami is impoverished and sends regular tribute to the pirates, and the less said about the Florida Keys the better. The Everglades are apparently infested with mutated predatory plants and animals, including "man-eating mutant manatees" to use a local turn of phrase.
The north of Florida? Apparently St. Augustine is a popular stopping point on a major caravan route that goes from the NCR to Boston. If we could nab one of their traders there the intelligence potential is immense. Besides that, just the typical Wasteland settlements and townships, with massive swathes of kudzu covering up what could be prime farmland.
The Caribbean situation is where our Navy can really shine. The whole place is crawling with pirates based in a number of locations. The most major is New Tortuga on Hispaniola, with Port Royal in Jamaica a close second. I recommend sending our submarines once we have them finished and properly crewed to first hunt down the pirate ships, then blow their harbours to Hell with cruise missiles. Then we can move towards diplomatic or military integration (as circumstances require) of Cuba and Puerto Rico, former US territories we'd do well to get back in the fold (speaking of submarines, I got a signature that seemed to be a pre-War Chinese boomer heading southward past Florida on November 8th. Cause for concern?). I need not mention how important control of the Caribbean is to retaking the Panama and Nicaragua Canals, and hence to our long-term strategic goals on the West Coast (not to mention establishing a presence in the Gulf).
God Bless America.
-*-
Dear Lucy
I hate to be away from you, but my work at [REDACTED] will soon be done. Once regular Army troops start deploying at our base there I can go back and spend some time with you before we have to go into another warzone (hopefully a long while). How're Davis and James doing? Last letter from you they were scuffling all the time, hopefully you've knocked some sense into them. Twins shouldn't be squabbling like that. I wish I was able to be with you more, but orders are orders.
Merry Christmas, with much love
Liam Walker
==*==
Goodneighbor hadn't changed much since the US Government had arrived, save for the constant roar of vertibird engines. They were heard all over Boston now, and Nate had no doubt raiders and super mutants were learning to fear that sound. With an assaultron and a hardened private eyeright behind him, he was sure he could take on the local toughs if he had to.
The three headed to the Memory Den briskly, checking in to Amari. Hopefully she had a fitting body for Kleo to inhabit.
"How's it going Amari?" the combat robot asked in that oddly seductive synthesised tone. "Found a female body formy consciousness to inhabit, baby?"
"Yes," she said, "She's in the basement."
They quickly went down to the basement and Nate took a glance at what was to be the Assaultron's new physical form. It was a woman in her twenties with sandy blonde hair – done up in a ponytail – wearing a leather jacket and jeans. Amari adjusted the wires and checked the equipment one final time before pressing her hand down on the lever.
"Are you ready Kleo?" she asked. "Once I transfer your consciousness I will not be able to reverse it, no matter what I do."
"I'm ready as ever, baby."
"Okay, then."
She pulled the lever and the assaultron body dropped lifelessly to the ground. The figure lying in the memory pod, however, woke up and breathed hard, opening her grey eyes.
"You okay, Kleo?"
"So many new feelings!" she said confusedly, putting her hand to her forehead. "Heat, cold, touch, smell – my old form had analogues, but nothing like this. The only thing I miss is the beam projector in my forehead. It was so useful for eliminating hostiles."
"You'll manage," Nate said. "Curie had trouble walking the first few days. Wasn't adjusted to a humanoid body plan, you see."
"Well then," Amari said. "Done here?" "Not exactly," Nate said, turning to the good Doctor. "I have something for you to look at, related to my son's disappearance. Nick's already filled you into the details about that, I guess?"
"Yes, but- Dear God! Was that implant part of some man's brain?!"
"Yes, it was. Belonged to a mercenary called Kellogg, the one who kidnapped my son. We think he might have known how to get into the Institute. But I'm not sure myself how that's gonna help."
"It's similar to devices implanted into synths," she said, looking over it. "Intended to translate organic perceptions into permanent machine records based on quantum computing devices similar to those used in artificial intelligence. Hmm ... encrypted beyond these machines' abilities to decipher by themselves. But – all Institute technology is also cross-compatible. Mr. Valentine can host Kellogg's memories while you explore them inside the machine."
"Any side effects?"
"You might gain some minor tics at minimum. Perhaps Kellogg had a particular taste for a certain type of alcohol – that tendency of his might rub off on you. Alteration to your personality should be minor, though we've never done this before. We have no idea what the full risks could be."
"I'll risk it," Nate said. "Anything to find my son."
Amari readjusted the wires and gently guided Kleo out of the memory pod so Nate could enter. Then, he entered in and she activated the pod, securely strapping him in and connecting the neural interface cables before closing it. The screen lit up and began to show static, and Nate's vision was consumed by a blinding white light.
==*==
REPORT ON VAULT 81
From: Dr. Edward Cody
To: Dr. Robert S. Whitley, Chief Scientific Adjunct to the Massachusetts Expedition
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: The strongest man in the world is powerless if he has a weak will.
The Vault 81 insertion was an unqualified success. While the President was making a speech to the assembled residents of the Vault, several Secret Service troopers and my good self entered the "unofficial" areas of the Vault to see if the experiment carried out there had achieved anything. To our surprise, it had actually worked out rather well. While all the mole rats used as test subjects had been killed (presumably by Vault 81 security) we managed to find a back-up drive for the Ms. Nanny designated CVRIE and various (decayed) samples of a chemical I have officially dubbed "Panacea" for its remarkable properties. While the robot was absent (no clue where it went – still, sending a military force across Boston after one missing robot is a fool's errand) we have samples of Panacea and various of the robot's research notes.
What does this mean for us, Dr. Whitley? Very much. Panacea is a surefire cure for 99.9% of all bacterial and viral diseases. Our medical logistics will be vastly simplified once we have a number of factories producing the product. Also, Panacea will make a very appealing carrot for our diplomats to dangle in front of native leaders. We are talking about something that could shave off the projected time to reintegrate the entire East Coast by as much as a decade. I've already sent samples ahead to our science teams at the Adams AFB crawler-transporter. The only thing bad about this situation is that this is the only good thing the old social experiments gave us, if you don't count the pods we scavenged from Vault 112.
God Bless America.
==*==
It took an instant for the machine to link between Nate's own consciousness and those of Kellogg, crystallised into recordings by man-machine interface, but it felt like an eternity. He saw flashes of his own memories – of war on the bloody ice of Anchorage, the moment he kissed Betty (or was it Nora) – and then … it was that Canadian town, executing the insurgent, last survivor of his cell that had faked their surrenders to get close enough to his unit to detonate the explosives they had on them, but the commander of the cell hadn't had the nerve to go through, so he'd ordered (was ordering) the man killed on the spot simply out of anger and disgust for the good men under him that'd died, and then the press corps had turned up last minute and shot (were shooting) the whole affair as a feel-good moment for the people back home, and he'd just laughed (was laughing) at the absurdity of it all-
He was launched out of the nightmare memory and into a dark void, standing on a glowing bridge of neural synapses. This was the machine's best effort to translate the broken, scrambled and decaying memories of the mercenary Kellogg into a form he could comprehend – still, it scared him. Exploring his own memories had been safe, if painful, but exploring another's was an altogether alien experience.
"You will be experiencing these memories as Kellogg," Amari's hazy, static-tinged voice said from the world outside the virtual reality created by the pod. "As a result, you will experience some confusion."
He walked forward, towards what looked like a child's bedroom floating in space, and then-
-He was sitting on the bed, Ma (not my Mom, his) looking over him thoughtfully. The radio was giving some kind of news about an election or something, he couldn't hear the details. And then he turned over to (his) Mom and talked.
"My schoolteacher, she said NCR was going to fix everything up, make it like before the big war," he said.
"Connie," (his) Mom said. "Don't you believe what that damn fool radio tells you, or your schoolteacher either. She feeds you any more of that pie-in-the-sky nonsense; I'll stop sending you there. The only thing that's going to protect you in this world is this gun here."
She took it out from underneath her blouse, showed it to him. A .44 Magnum, her (Kellogg's) weapon.
"Go on," she went on. "Take it. You're old enough for it. You've gotta be the man of the house now, since your (his) pappa's such a deadbeat."
He took it in his hand, heard (Kellogg's) father banging on the door and shouting, and then-
The room emptied, and he was Nate again. The memory had run out, and another bridge glimmered before him, leading him onward.
He took it and was in a living room. A young woman, (Kellogg's) wife stood before him, while (Kellogg's) baby was in a cot, sleeping peacefully. In the living room window, the Golden Gate Bridge floated in the dark void of space.
"So, Connie," Sarah said. "I hope it's better here than the Hub."
"It is, Sarah," (Kellogg) said. "We have a house here and I've already got a job. Things are going to be fine."
"What's the job?"
"Running security for the Shi. It's nothing serious, just a lot of standing around and looking tough. Before long I'll have enough money to start my own outfit. Things'll be great."
"I hope so," Sarah said, then the memory ended again, and Nate went on.
A street in San Francisco. Some kind of celebration was happening, people were cheering and whooping. A young child grabbed Kellogg's hand.
"Isn't it great, Mister?" The child asked. "They blew up the Enclave! We won't have to worry about those bad guys no more!"
Suddenly Kellogg heard a man's voice and turned to face him.
"You won't be glad to hear this," he said. "But you messed with us too many times, Mr. Conrad Kellogg. As a result, my associates decided to pay a visit to your wife and child while you were "running security". I'm sure you'll be glad to hear that they died very. Fucking. Slowly. And you weren't there to help them one bit."
Kellogg drew his pistol and fired a round straight into the man's head. As if in slow motion, he saw the bullet penetrate his head and send it flying in pieces like a smashed watermelon. Blood, brain, bits of bone, eyes falling to the ground like grapes – every nauseating detail. And then, he turned, ran, and-
The street emptied. The revellers, the child, the crime boss – all gone. Just Nate in an empty San Francisco street, wondering what had happened to give the US Government such a bad rep back west. Deciding that such questions were unimportant, he carried on into the next intact memory.
The first thing that hit him was the smell – a mix of gunpowder, alcohol and cigarette smoke as strong as it was unpleasant. A super mutant's head was mounted over the bar and the radio was playing some ugly late-20th century music that Nate recognised as an old genre called "metal". Frankly, even this brief snippet - heard secondhand at that - was distasteful enough
"So, Kellogg, you up for the job?" Kellogg's client asked.
"Depends how much you have to offer," Kellogg said.
"Five hundred caps, and not those shitty Guarana ones either. Ya see, there's a lawman up from the Lone Star Republic meddling in my business, and I want ya to deal with him. Typical Austin city-slicker, ya know?"
"I'm not from around here."
"No biggie. All ya need to do is go ten miles west to Amarillo and make sure he gets a nice quick real-estate deal. And please – try and make it look like an accident. I don't want no Texas Rangers getting all over my business, ya see?"
"I'll do it."
Then the memory faded and Nate kept on, leaving the Texan bar behind and heading to what looked like a warehouse.
Three synths stood in front of Kellogg, skeletal androids made of plastic and metal. Before him a woman sat at a desk.
"Mr. Kellogg," she said. "You have caused a great deal of trouble for Institute operations in the Commonwealth. Your elimination from the equation is regret-"
The mercenary moved with lightning speed, instincts flying into motion. He used one synth as a shield and took down the other two, before unloading his .44 into his impromptu shield and scattering its mechanical brain all over the floor.
"You were saying?" he said as he levelled the gun at the Institute woman.
"I think you might well be useful to us," she said, unintimidated and seemingly impressed.
"How much you paying me?"
"As much as you want."
"What's the job?"
"We think you might like a permanent
position with us."
"I'll take it."
The memory ended and Nate went, right into a familiar scene. Dear God. This was ... he didn't want to relive it. The cryo room in Vault 111, with him and his wife in their pods. Nora was there, and Nate remembered – meeting her as a JAG, marrying her, Shaun's birth, and ... her murder. Now he was looking at it through the eyes of the murderer, as Kellogg struggled with her for the baby, took it from her and shot her straight in the chest.
The scene ended and Nate rushed ahead to the final memory, knowing he was at the end.
It was Kellogg's house in Diamond City. He was there with a boy – Nate's son Shaun, ten years old. Travis was on the radio, going over a news story with his old awkwardness. Then an Institute Courser appeared in a flash of light.
"Kellogg, you have been reassigned to a new mission," the Courser said, his words soft but spoken in a stony monotone. "Dr. Brian Virgil, a defector from the Institute who has fled to the Glowing Sea. Find him and eliminate him as a threat to the Institute by any means necessary."
"I will," Kellogg said. "And the boy?"
"He is to go back to the Director until your mission has been accomplished. Then the Director's experiment will resume as before. That is all you need to know."
The Courser grabbed the boy and held his hand roughly, before saying some co-ordinates. The two vanished in a flash of light and a pop of inrushing air. The memory ran out and the room turned empty. Nate heard Amari's voice again.
"We're taking you out of the VR construct now," she said. "Prepare for extraction in one, two, three!"
Nate's world dissolved to static, then he saw the basement where he'd been hooked up clear as day, his throat dry and his stomach empty.
"How long was I in there?" he asked.
"About three hours real time," Amari explained.
"Did you find out anything about the Institute?" Nick asked.
"They use some kind of teleportation to enter and leave their base," he said. "There's somebody who knows more – Brian Virgil, a scientist who defected from them. There's only one problem with getting to him."
"What's that?"
"He's in the Glowing Sea."
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Warmaster
Well-known member
That Twitter post is going to cause me headaches for a long time. Fucking Emil.
Navarro
Well-known member
At least he gave me inspiration to move forward with this project again.
f1onagher
Well-known member
To our gain. Now that we're back here I thought I'd run a few questions past you. Firstly, was Chicago a Brotherhood or Enclave holdout initially? In Tactics it's a Brotherhood base meaning that the US would have had to eject them during the push west, but if it was an Enclave base as implied by ED-E that means a simple reintegration.
Down in Texas, was the Lone Star Republic formed by the alliance between Lone Star (Abilene) and the Texas Brotherhood or some other method?
And are Chimeric mutants (mole people, snake people, talking deathclaws etc.) a thing in Autumn Morning-verse?
Navarro
Well-known member
Yeah I'd been thinking about moving forward on this for a while, reworking parts of the original was essential - didn't feel right to me on rereading that Arcade just got with the program so easily (poor guy, he's really between a rock and a hard place). That this was the memory chapter was just the icing on the cake lol.
Basically I'm going by the FNV lore, Tactics is semi-canon and it makes sense for the MW-BoS' real heartland to be in the Rockies with more bunkers (and of course Vault Zero). They might have gone there, but they didn't stay there.
So basically Chicago is established as a big layover and rallying point for the Enclave during the flight from Navarro. They abandon smaller scattered bases across the country (and which Richardson had written off under "they're obviously genetically impure"), retreat completely from one large base part of the pre-War plan (Fort MacArthur in Montana, mentioned in FVB), and recruit various Vaults around the country with varying degrees of force/coercion/propaganda. That's where the army in FO3 comes from, why Autumn brags about the Enclave being "at the height of its power" after the oil rig.
The bases around Chicago remain a fallback point during FO3, it's where the civilian "government" apart from Eden reside (basically all under one guy, the Secretary of Peacekeeping and Reclamation, intentionally given to a useless stuffed shirt whom Autumn pushes aside in the leadership contest after killing Eden then cripples by recreating the pre-War Cabinet to take over his job, and finally sacks shortly after), and where the "tail" of Autumn's army based in Raven Rock exists. After Autumn takes power by arranging Eden's death and holding an election (no designated successor, remember) to legitimise his takeover the Enclave assert their authority over local settlements in the ruins of Chicago much like they do in D. C., use them as a recruitment base and start slowly rebuilding the city.
Texan Brotherhood were absorbed into the LSR, had already diverged deeply from the Codex and formed the core of the LSR army. The capital was originally Lone Star/Abilene but shifted back to Austin over time. Since F:BOS takes place decades before FO2 the Texan BOS knew nothing but rumours about the Enclave and what went down in FO2, being out of contact.
Talking Deathclaws were all BLAMMed by Frank Horrigan, S'lannter were cut anyway, and the whole game the snake people were meant to be in was cancelled. The animal-people factions always struck me as un-Fallouty IMO at any rate.
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DarthOne
☦️
Not to mention furry/scalie bait.
Navarro
Well-known member
*flashbacks to the FNV mod that shall not be named*
Navarro
Well-known member
From the all-new chapter coming after next:
==*==
The last time Nate had been at a party like this had been almost a year – no, 200 or so – ago, after the Reds had been driven from Anchorage. That brutal three-day mission had been the toughest of his life – he'd led a handpicked strike team personally, operating just below General Chase himself, and knocked out the two barriers to the main assault, the Chinese heavy field guns guarding the surrounding cliffs and the pulse field blocking the main power-armoured forces. The 108th had formed the vanguard of the assault after that, powered companies working as speartips to punch through the Chnese trench lines. It had been a gruelling journey back to base, to learn when he arrived that the ChiComs were in full flight and Jingwei had shot himself. After that, he'd gotten his discharge and gone home to his pregnant wife Nora. Then Shaun had been born – I can't imagine what they're doing to him, that bastard Kellogg must have been lying just to fuck with me – and with nonstop news of US victories in Asia, he'd imagined that soon he'd be able to live a peaceful life. But instead the bombs happened, and I woke up to a country at war again.
==*==
The last time Nate had been at a party like this had been almost a year – no, 200 or so – ago, after the Reds had been driven from Anchorage. That brutal three-day mission had been the toughest of his life – he'd led a handpicked strike team personally, operating just below General Chase himself, and knocked out the two barriers to the main assault, the Chinese heavy field guns guarding the surrounding cliffs and the pulse field blocking the main power-armoured forces. The 108th had formed the vanguard of the assault after that, powered companies working as speartips to punch through the Chnese trench lines. It had been a gruelling journey back to base, to learn when he arrived that the ChiComs were in full flight and Jingwei had shot himself. After that, he'd gotten his discharge and gone home to his pregnant wife Nora. Then Shaun had been born – I can't imagine what they're doing to him, that bastard Kellogg must have been lying just to fuck with me – and with nonstop news of US victories in Asia, he'd imagined that soon he'd be able to live a peaceful life. But instead the bombs happened, and I woke up to a country at war again.
Navarro
Well-known member
It actually kinda works since it shows Nate as the kind of person who isn't really against Autumn's, or the Enclave's in this fic, ruthless tendencies to the point that he would break with them (plus Autumn has CHA 10 SPECIAL in game, he's a naturally charismatic fucker).
Remember, while they're not into "genocide all wastelanders with inane mad science plots" anymore in this fic, they're still not quite "good guys" (the ERB mod for HOI4 is waaay more optimistic than me about the capacity of the Enclave to reform, you can turn the Enclave into a wholesome chungus good guy democracy in less than a decade). In this fic and EATB I'd rate them as antiheroes at best.
But then, good guys get chewed up and spat out by the wasteland. Ask the people of Vault 3 and Elder Lyons.
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Navarro
Well-known member
Another snippety-snip of the chapter after next:
==*==
POSTMORTEM ON PRE-WAR CONTINUITY OF GOVERNMENT PLAN "ENCLAVE"
CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET
PRESIDENTIAL ACCESS ONLY
DATE: 08-15-2287
Continuity of Government Plan ENCLAVE was created in 2045 as a revision of previous and updated in response to a series of incidents over the mid-21st century, including the Palestinian terrorist attack on Tel Aviv and resulting Israeli enactment of Operation Samson on the United Arab Republic.
The plan involved retention of vital elements of the US government and US military assets, along with leaders in business and scientific fields, in fortified bunkers, prepared for this purpose under the highest possible security using the most well-vetted personnel available, for approx. 40 years. After this time period was completed, an AI installed at NORAD would be activated from the main base, Control Station ENCLAVE, and use a robotic army to restore order across the US, after which the government would return to the mainland. During the time ENCLAVE was in effect, the POTUS would have total power to do whatever was necessary to maintain and restore the Federal government's authority. Assets to be used in ENCLAVE were marked out with a unique logo – an E with three middle bars representing the branches of FEDGOV, surrounded by the Commonwealth stars.
Listed below are the main ENCLAVE bases, listed alphabetically:
EAGLE – Fort MacArthur, MT, weapons armories and aircraft hangars, abandoned and demolished during reconvening of US forces at Chicago.
EARLY – Iron Mountain, UT. Armories and research labs, stripped clean, abandoned and demolished during reconvening of US forces at Chicago.
ELECT – Fort Carl Bell, Mare Tranquilitatis, Luna. Ultimate fallback position, weapons and equipment storage, spacecraft hangar. All contact lost after meteor damage to its radio relays shortly after atomic war – unknown if any still live there.
ELITE – Greenbrier Resort, fell victim to coup of SECAG Thomas Eckhart, who murdered Congress members evacuated there and declared himself POTUS. Following internal conflict led to abandonment of base. Currently used as Congressional apartments and meeting areas.
EMPIRE – Site R at Raven Rock, PA, backup Pentagon and transcontinental comms centre. Still in use as US Army and government base of operations, current seat of POTUS.
ENCLAVE – Main US Government Continuity of Government operations base, located in offshore Pacific oil rig. Destroyed by NCR terrorist attack sabotaging its nuclear reactor 11-05-2242, minimal personnel evacuation, loss of President Richard 'Dick' Richardson and entire Cabinet.
ENCLAVE was in effect 23-10-2077 to 3-09-2283 (the President and other essential personnel being evacuated to Control Station ENCLAVE 14-01-2077), much longer than previously anticipated, beginning with President Alfred F. Jones and ending with President Augustus Autumn. The USA however remains under state of emergency conditions, beginning 10-24-2077 and renewed annually.
We believe the partial failure of ENCLAVE to have been the result of sabotage. Communications with NORAD were deliberately cut on the mainland, and damage caused by the atomic war was much higher than anticipated. Approx. 50% the US population was expected to die under average circumstance, 75% at maximum - instead, we estimate over 90% casualties. The Pacific Fleet failed to convene on Control Station ENCLAVE as had been given in classified standing orders. Recon teams have established that many pre-War ABM and air defence systems failed to activate when faced with the Chinese first strike, from Excalibur x-ray laser missiles to early warning radars. The Chinese "stealth fleet" launched a devastating initial first strike, but couldn't have done so much damage on its own.
Most worryingly, analysts have indicated that there are no clear-cut signs of Red Chinese or broader communist activity in this campaign of sabotage against the US military and government. That we don't know who it was only raises further worries, even after two hundred years.
==*==
POSTMORTEM ON PRE-WAR CONTINUITY OF GOVERNMENT PLAN "ENCLAVE"
CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET
PRESIDENTIAL ACCESS ONLY
DATE: 08-15-2287
Continuity of Government Plan ENCLAVE was created in 2045 as a revision of previous and updated in response to a series of incidents over the mid-21st century, including the Palestinian terrorist attack on Tel Aviv and resulting Israeli enactment of Operation Samson on the United Arab Republic.
The plan involved retention of vital elements of the US government and US military assets, along with leaders in business and scientific fields, in fortified bunkers, prepared for this purpose under the highest possible security using the most well-vetted personnel available, for approx. 40 years. After this time period was completed, an AI installed at NORAD would be activated from the main base, Control Station ENCLAVE, and use a robotic army to restore order across the US, after which the government would return to the mainland. During the time ENCLAVE was in effect, the POTUS would have total power to do whatever was necessary to maintain and restore the Federal government's authority. Assets to be used in ENCLAVE were marked out with a unique logo – an E with three middle bars representing the branches of FEDGOV, surrounded by the Commonwealth stars.
Listed below are the main ENCLAVE bases, listed alphabetically:
EAGLE – Fort MacArthur, MT, weapons armories and aircraft hangars, abandoned and demolished during reconvening of US forces at Chicago.
EARLY – Iron Mountain, UT. Armories and research labs, stripped clean, abandoned and demolished during reconvening of US forces at Chicago.
ELECT – Fort Carl Bell, Mare Tranquilitatis, Luna. Ultimate fallback position, weapons and equipment storage, spacecraft hangar. All contact lost after meteor damage to its radio relays shortly after atomic war – unknown if any still live there.
ELITE – Greenbrier Resort, fell victim to coup of SECAG Thomas Eckhart, who murdered Congress members evacuated there and declared himself POTUS. Following internal conflict led to abandonment of base. Currently used as Congressional apartments and meeting areas.
EMPIRE – Site R at Raven Rock, PA, backup Pentagon and transcontinental comms centre. Still in use as US Army and government base of operations, current seat of POTUS.
ENCLAVE – Main US Government Continuity of Government operations base, located in offshore Pacific oil rig. Destroyed by NCR terrorist attack sabotaging its nuclear reactor 11-05-2242, minimal personnel evacuation, loss of President Richard 'Dick' Richardson and entire Cabinet.
ENCLAVE was in effect 23-10-2077 to 3-09-2283 (the President and other essential personnel being evacuated to Control Station ENCLAVE 14-01-2077), much longer than previously anticipated, beginning with President Alfred F. Jones and ending with President Augustus Autumn. The USA however remains under state of emergency conditions, beginning 10-24-2077 and renewed annually.
We believe the partial failure of ENCLAVE to have been the result of sabotage. Communications with NORAD were deliberately cut on the mainland, and damage caused by the atomic war was much higher than anticipated. Approx. 50% the US population was expected to die under average circumstance, 75% at maximum - instead, we estimate over 90% casualties. The Pacific Fleet failed to convene on Control Station ENCLAVE as had been given in classified standing orders. Recon teams have established that many pre-War ABM and air defence systems failed to activate when faced with the Chinese first strike, from Excalibur x-ray laser missiles to early warning radars. The Chinese "stealth fleet" launched a devastating initial first strike, but couldn't have done so much damage on its own.
Most worryingly, analysts have indicated that there are no clear-cut signs of Red Chinese or broader communist activity in this campaign of sabotage against the US military and government. That we don't know who it was only raises further worries, even after two hundred years.
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Chapter Twelve
New
Navarro
Well-known member
Chapter 12
Mad Jack entered Quincy with guns pointing at him from every side – assault rifles, laser and plasma guns, the weapons of assaultrons and sentry bots, even a couple nuclear catapults. The Gunners' name was not a misnomer. No one knew where they came from. Some said they crawled out of a Vault, product of some mad experiment to create the perfect warrior society. Others were sceptical and said they'd come from up
Ronto way, soldiers of the Governor-General who'd deserted en masse and headed
to New England to work as mercenaries. Some said it was both, or more. Whatever one thought about their origin, no-one dared cross them. Not after Quincy.
They'd razed the town, wiping out almost all the Minutemen sent to protect it, and ruled over its charred corpse. From then on, they'd done every kind of unscrupulous mercenary work imaginable. Want a caravan escorted? The Gunners would do it. Want your neighbour's farm burnt down? The Gunners would do it. Want a settlement destroyed – the men killed, women and children enslaved? The Gunners would do it, and with a spring in their step at that.
He looked at Clint, the Minuteman traitor who'd sold out the town to take rulership of it, and the two men stared at each other, a long contest of wills in which neither dared back off.
Finally, the former Minuteman broke the ice.
"What're you Raiders doing here in Quincy?" he asked, blunt and to the point. "We're honest mercs, doing honest business. Not like you."
"It's the motherfuckers who showed up a month ago," Jack explained. "I want an alliance between the two of us, to send them out of here."
"How many caps you got?"
"This ain't about caps, Mister General. These fuckers are taking down raider groups one by one across the Commonwealth. You think they won't hit you eventually after deciding that you're raiders? They've already allied with the Minutemen – do you think those fuckers have forgotten the licking you gave them here, will forgive you for betraying them, that they won't come here for payback? And do you really imagine they won't call on their new buddies in fancy power armour to help them?"
"Heh, you have a point. So what's your plan for kicking this lot out?"
"Simple – we divide our forces and take down Lexington and the Minutemen at once. Then take out the big motherfucking boat anchored outside the harbour. Then, reap the reward."
"Sounds like a plan. I'll lead the force I send against Fort Independence, Tessa the troops I send to Lexington, while Baker holds the fort here in Quincy. That good?"
"Sounds good. I'll lead our combined force against Lexington myself, if you don't mind."
"I'd be wary of that, Blackheart. History is full of men who led from the front and got killed 'cause of it."
"Like Hell I'll let some pansies from the Capital Wasteland and Philly take down Bloody Joe! The ass end of the whole waste, and now they say they want to rule over us!"
"That's the spirit."
"Yeah, it sure is!"
==*==
"So that confirms it," Whitley said. "The Institute uses teleportation to get around. I had my suspicions, but now it's confirmed."
"You know anything about that kind of science?" Nate asked. "I never heard of anything like that pre-War."
"It was top secret, developed from reverse-engineered ... foreign technology by a government think tank at the Big Mountain facility in California. CIT must have either rediscovered it independently or gained access to the requisite files somehow. We know it's possible, we know they did it, but the specifics of the process were never shared with the regular military or government."
"So far as my knowledge goes – I'm no quantum physicist - teleportation is a controlled quantum tunnelling event. One ceases to be here and begins to be there. But there are limitations. Mass is the biggest. Power scales up exponentially beyond human mass, you can just about teleport a man in power armour and you can forget about anything heavier. Range is also an issue. And the last is that you need a carrier wave."
"A carrier wave?"
"Yes, an electromagnetic wavelength broadcast to stabilise the quantum entanglement between two regions of spacetime. What our method of blocking teleportation does is block the carrier wave in a region and prevent you from sending material objects to or from the defended location by making it impossible to get a lock. We sent a satellite one day before the nukes to broadcast a carrier wave over an entire hemisphere – contact with our orbital grid hasn't been fully re-established yet but we think it crashed in 2280, somewhere in the South-West."
"Very bad timing."
"It would've gone up a month earlier but there was a shipping error in vital parts. What a shame! If we'd had that up when we planned we could've sent soldiers straight into Cheng's bunker, captured him and the Party leadership, and then forced China into an unconditional surrender. "
And Nora wouldn't have been murdered, Nate thought. I'd have never lost Shaun. And ... the world wouldn't have gone nowhere for two hundred years.
"Are ... are you okay?"
"I'm fine," Nate replied. "Just ... thinking about the past."
A knock came loudly on the door and Nate opened it. A military secretary was standing at the entrance to Whitley's office – golden-blonde haired with grass-green eyes, she looked immaculate wearing a navy-blue military jacket over a white blouse, her skirt falling down to her knees. She herself couldn't help but blush and flash a smile on seeing him, before urgently stating what she had to say.
"Mr. Washington," the girl said. "The President wishes to meet with you."
"Is it urgent?"
"No."
"Can you please wait outside ten minutes, then?"
The secretary adjusted her cap, and then closed the door. Nate realised suddenly, and with a touch of disappointment, that he hadn't even gotten to read her nametag.
"Do you know anything about assaultrons?" he asked Whitley.
"Well, I'm an expert in robotics. What did you want to ask?"
"I have a blank Assaultron body I came by recently while ... looking for supplies. With no OS installed, I was hoping-"
"You should know well that private ownership of military-grade robots isn't allowed by the Second Amendment! The Supreme Court ruled in-"
"Is it possible for the General of the Minutemen to have an Assaultron assigned to him on permanent bodyguard duty?"
"Yes, that can work."
"Very well."
The secretary knocked on the door again, and this time Nate let her lead him to one of the vertibird pads. She waved him off as he got in (still didn't get her name!) and a pilot flew him to USS Richardson.
The view from above the Commonwealth was breathtaking, if it didn't offset the chill of the winter air as it flew against the wind to the great aircraft carrier. The President was standing on the flight deck awaiting him, wearing his field coat – Nate noted a colonel's rank insignia - and carrying a box ofmedals.
"I've been waiting for you ten minutes longer than I should have," he said. "What delayed you?"
"Saying my goodbyes to Dr. Whitley, Mr. President," Nate replied. "The man's brilliant at what he does."
"Indeed. Though sometimes he needs a little pushing, just like Dr. Wilzig. I once had to threaten to scrap one of his favourite eyebots to get him to move forward on a major project. He's never really gotten over it."
"I can imagine."
"Anyway, these are your medals."
There were several – the Purple Heart he'd earned from the shrapnel injury at Fairbanks, the Canada Annexation Medal with its maple-leaf design, the Medal of Honor he'd won at Anchorage, and another one – a gold cross similar to the Distinguished Service Cross with the date "2077" on the reverse side – with several others along.
"What medal is that?" Nate asked.
"Only the rarest military decoration in the entire Armed Forces," the President replied. "The World War Three Victory Cross. The only other man awarded with it is your friend Elliot in the Marines. The other medals are replacements for those you earned before whichyou lost when your home was destroyed."
"I suppose we won the War in the end," Nate shrugged. "Even if the victory was more Pyrrhic than anything else."
Just then a military aide rushed out onto the deck of the Richardson, panting furiously.
"Mr. President!" he yelled. "The raiders are massing for an attack! This is it!"
"You head back to Lexington with me," Autumn said. "I'll get data on the situation, then we'll show these bastardshow a real army fights!"
Nate followed Autumn to Air Force One, surprised he was actually getting to fly on it as they rushed back to Lexington. Autumn quickly headed into the main command centre, but not before requisitioning Nate a US Army motorbike and telling him to gather up the Minutemen.
==*==
"What's the sitrep?" President Autumn asked, looking over the map of Boston and environs digitally displayed on the command centre's table. Colonel Bradley, the military governor and officially the man in charge of the expedition, could hear the rough tone in his voice. It was a tone he hadn't heard the President use in years.
"Our aerial scouts have discovered a large force of raiders and Gunners heading north towards Lexington," Bradley explained. "Along with a smaller force made up solely of Gunners heading towards our allies' main base. "
"How long can we hold out?"
"Indefinitely, but we'd be leaving the civvies out to dry if we did. We don't have enough space here to hold them, and it'd strain our food supplies."
"Well then, we go out to meet them. Tanks, artillery, infantry, air support, the works. As for the Gunners attacking Fort Independence, relay my orders to Onassis at Boston Airport that she's to intercept them with her Marines."
"We don't have enough artillery pieces in theatre," Bradley noted.
"Our local allies can take up the slack," Autumn said.
"Wasteland militiamen? Do you really-"
"We'll make real US soldiers out of them, give it time. We've done it before and we'll do it again."
Sirens blared as troops hurriedly got into power armour, tanks revved their engines, artillery guns turned southwards, and vertibirds prepared to fly.
"Men of the US Army Third Infantry Division! First Armoured Division!" Autumn's voice rang out as he spoke to the men. He allowed himself a slight smile – one of the things he'd learned to enjoy about politics was giving speeches. Turned out he was naturally good at it. "US Air Force 5th Vertibird Wing! And last but most certainly not least US Marine Corps 1st Marine Division!"
"Today a bunch of raiders are thinking that they could tangle with us, to threaten Lexington Air Force Base and our native allies in the Boston region. Today we teach them otherwise! Today we slaughter those bastards like the human hogs they are! Today we cut them down by the bushel! Today we wipe them off the face of planet Earth! Remember, we are fighting - as we always have - for the American people! We cannot let them down!"
"We're not just going to shoot these human animals; we're going to crush them under the treads of our tanks till they're just a red smear on the ground; we're going to set them on fire with thermite; we're going to reduce them to green goo with plasma weapons; we're going to turn their world into one long symphony of fire, thunder and pain with everything in our arsenal until death comes as an undeserved mercy. "
"And one last thing, in light of the recent news from the West Coast: Remember Navarro!"
"REMEMBER NAVARRO!" the troops replied and began preparing to march out.
Autumn smiled; most of these boys and girls had never heard of Navarro before a few weeks ago, and now they were ready to march out to avenge it. It was a mix of things, he knew – they believed in the cause, the one he'd tortured and killed and fought bloody battles for. Every atrocity, every killing and underhanded tactic and ruthless act, had been for America and her people – the lawful government had shown itself to be the ones who could save America, wake her up from her wasteland nightmare. If God hadn't raised him up to do this, to save the government from its own madness and save America from her torment, who else could He have chosen? And they loved him, loved their Commander-in-Chief. That was why there'd been no real contenders after he'd done away with Eden. His men would march into Hell itself if he ordered it. He felt more than a flicker of pride in that.
==*==
Somerville Place was a well-equipped, if small, farming community which had recently turned back towards the Minutemen and started supporting them. As a result, three artillery pieces had been set up in the town to dissuade a raider attack. Now with the news about a force of raiders marching northward toward Lexington, the guns were being turned north-eastward, toward the old Coast Guard pier. They got the order to fire just at 11:00 AM, as US forces were still about a quarter of an hour away from first contact with the enemy.
All the Minutemen Nate could rustle up on such short notice had already been positioned in a copse of trees by the road, in a prime space for an ambush. Though they weren't enough to beat the force on an even footing, they'd damage enemy morale and kill any leaders so as to force them to break all the sooner.
They were just past the Coast Guard pier when the explosions started. The first one consumed the lead vehicle of the Road Warriors, taking down their leader, Butcher Mac, in an instant. The second took down three other vehicles, and the third killed thirteen raiders.
The column of raiders pulled back and prepared for battle, seeking to get out of range of the enemy artillery.
Nate watched from the treeline with about five hundred minutemen and Kleo. Much as he was interested in Piper (can't stop thinking about that army girl either, dammit!I), he couldn't deny that her new body was certainly easy on the eyes. But still, would Nora have-
He killed that thought. The pain just hurt too much.
"When do we get to open fire?" she impatiently asked, trying to crouch while carrying a Gatling laser. She'd immediately gone for the biggest gun in the Castle's armoury, and Nate had a feeling she was somewhat disappointed she wasn't strong enough to lift one of the mortars newly installed on the walls of the old fortress.
"When I give the order and not a moment sooner," Nate said. "Try and aim for the major targets. Ones that look like they're leaders. The more confused the raiders are, the easier the military will take them out."
"Okay," she said. "That I can handle. My tactical programming is currently running combat scenarios, and I can't sayour odds look good, baby."
"Why do you call me that?"
"It's a lot better than, "Owner Nate"isn't it? I thought you might like the personal touch."
"Please try not to use it, at leastright now. Call me "Sir" or "General"."
"As you wish, General."
Somehow she managed to make that seem just as sultry as her previous term of choice.
The moment Nate saw the first US Army tanks from his position he gave his first and final order of the battle.
"Minutemen! Fire at will on the enemy!"
A hurricane of firepower poured out from the woods into the raiders' flank.
==*==
Mad Jack couldn't believe how it was going. These bastards didn't just have tanks, they had fucking artillery! Every few seconds, one of their fucking guns miles away would open fire, there'd be a whistling sound, and then an explosion would blast apart another group of raiders. Some were coming from the north, some from the south-west, but he didn't have a clue how many were from each direction, or
even which was which.
And the fucking tanks. Firing some kind of bright blue beam from their main turrets, they'd wreck the vehicles. And with their Gatling lasers they'd carve through the men like Thanksgiving turkey. And they crushed people under their fucking treads until they were
smeared all over the ground like a thin red paste.
Not to mention the fucking snipers they apparently had in the woods taking out all the leaders! It was becoming a total rout as groups bled away from the main force, hoping to escape and survive. Finally only a small desperate core was left around him, enemy troops
in powered armour moving to wipe out the last dregs of organised resistance.
"I surrender!" he cried. "I fucking surrender!"
The power armoured giant before him said only one thing.
"Unfortunately, we don't accept surrenders from your kind."
Then a flurry of laser rounds struck him in the chest and he died like a dog in the bloody mud.
==*==
Preston Garvey was not in a good position. Gunners were assaulting the Castle, about three hundred in total. He shivered - would this be like Quincy all over again? We only lost that one 'cause we were betrayed, he tried to remind himself. He had one hundred Minutemen and a sentry bot. At least it wasn't raining or snowing right now, even if it looked like it might at any moment. That would have been the perfect cherry on top of such a bad day.
"They're approaching the gate, Colonel," one of his subordinates said breathlessly. "If only we had forewarning of an attack, we could have done something. Called in the patrols, laid a minefield, anything!"
"How's the artillery doing?"
"Mortar 1 is down, got hit by a missile. The others are doing fine; we're bombarding the Gunners as you ordered. But they've got three sentry bots and the turrets aren't doing much. If this goes on-"
A loud siren interrupted him, followed by a hearty, chest-thumping battlecry.
"OO-RAH!"
Preston rushed out of the General's quarters and to the walls to see what exactly was happening, ducking his head behind a crenellation to avoid sniper fire.
Troops in US military Power Armour were hitting the Gunners hard, vertibirds clearing them out from the nearby rooftops and firing on the sentry bots. That was Preston's cue to order a counter-offensive. Focusing their fire, the artillery managed to disable the sentry bots and suppress the enemy as they fought to the last man. At the battle's end, thirty-five Minutemen and seventeen US Marines were dead, with three vertibirds down.
Preston looked at Clint's face, lying there on the shore, with no gladness but only an odd sense of satisfaction. The Quincy Massacre had been avenged, with its instigator dead, his treason finally punished.
==*==
The battle was over. The raider army of three thousand had broken, with about five hundred dead and six hundred wounded. Not that the wounded stayed wounded for long, because all of them were just summarily shot by the US troops. The rest of course, broke and ran in all directions. Hunting them all down would take weeks, perhaps months.
Amidst the smoking vehicles and bodies being burnt on the field, Nate felt ... ill at ease. This was like Canada all over again, like the insurgency years and that … that day. That one POW hadn't been the only one he'd seen shot after surrendering, but that was the moment that always stuck in his memory. He'd restrained the Minutemen from taking part in the killing, wanting them to keep their innocence even as the young men chafed at the bit to take revenge on the raiders, but he hadn't tried to stop the US troops from involving themselves in the massacre. Maybe I should have, he thought. But then – they didn't have a proper prison to hold so many hardened criminals here yet, or any way to launch a proper investigation as to their crimes. It was ... the only solution rightnow, much as he hated to admit it. He hoped there'd be a better one soon, but what could be done right now?
Danse put it more simply talking after the battle was over.
"They had it coming," was all he said, and Nate couldn't help but nod.
==*==
"We licked 'em," Autumn said, the faces of Keller, Henshaw and Duplessis around him as he video-conferenced withb them from the Lexington command centre. "I was expecting a lot more casualties."
"Eighty-two Army men, ten vertibird pilots, and twenty Marines are casualties enough," Henshaw said. "Not to mention that cracking Quincy is going to cost many more. Our local allies can take what seems to be the raiders' main base, near Plymouth, but the Gunners have fortified Quincy well enough to make a vertibird insertion too risky, and it's surrounded by swamps, making an armoured or powered assault untenable. We can besiege them, but it'll tie down too many troops"
"Right now I'm thinking of Alexander and the Gordian knot. Centuries of people tried to unravel it with skill, but Alexander was the only one who ever succeeded. He just took his sword and cut it in two where generations before him had failed."
"What're you talking about, Mr. President?"
"I'm suggesting we carpet bomb the bastards."
"Why not deploy some of the supply of Curling-13?" Duplessis suggested. "It'd preserve the local infra-"
"With the wind patterns around here, it'd likely hit civilians or even our own troops as well. And Curling-13 is much more deadly than nuclear fallout. Fallout, you can take rad drugs if you're exposed and you'll be okay if you do it quickly enough – I'm proof of that. Curling-13? You breathe in or ingest one part per million and you're a dead man walking. There's a reason we keep it on ice in the most secure
under-levels of Raven Rock, and it's not to keep it from going off. Not to mention it wouldn't touch any war robots they still have."
"The President is correct," Kellersaid. "An incendiary air raid would tax our munitions supply, but it would deal with the Gunners with minimal losses to civilians. Rebuilding and resettling the town will be a simple matter after that."
"Very well," Duplessis said. "I'll have the orders relayed to Captain Harrison at Adams AFB."
==*==
Flight Captain Stuart LeMay, descendant of a famous 20th century general, checked his instruments, confirming that his B-95 Dragon strategic bomber was safely en route to the target. In years gone by long before his time, looking out from his cockpit he would have seen a whole galaxy of lights, the gleam of vehicles and buildings covering the ground in brilliant carpets of illumination linked by the gossamer strands of highways; nowadays, all a pilot could see from the air were the occasional gleams of campfires and the occasional glowing green rad-zone. One day, all that beauty would be restored. He may die well before it happened, but he knew it would happen. Some way or another, the lawful government would finally hold sway over all former US territory and it'd be as if the War had never happened. That was the Enclave's goal, and he'd help see it through.
"ETA at target is five minutes," the Captain's voice blared over the comms. "Prepare to loose bombs on my mark."
LeMay knew the armament he was carrying. Twenty incendiary bombs, each including 360 thermite bomblets, were stored in his plane. Multiplied by the number of planes in the squadron, that meant 300 bombs, and a total of 108,000 bomblets ready to fall on the enemy position. They'd be dumb, unguided munitions, but quantity would be enough to wipe out the bastards. Apparently they had enough missile launchers to make a vertibird drop untenable, but no real SAMs or lasers. That meant his plane, cruising at 30,000 feet, was perfectly safe from any retaliation.
"Pilots, bombs away. Send the bastards to Hell."
He pulled the lever and the bomb bay doors of his plane opened, releasing his cargo of incendiaries over Quincy. The firestorm started seconds later, a whirling inferno visible from Fort Independence as it destroyed everything in its wake. Robots shut down as they overheated, some even exploding like mini-nukes as their fusion plants melted down. Buildings were reduced to ashes, ravaged by the fires and burned to their foundations. And everybody in the town died. Whether by the fires or by asphyxiation as the oxygen was consumed by the towering inferno, they died to a man. The planes returned to Adams AFB, their mission completed. But it had been a costly one as such things went – though thankfully not in lives. With the current state of the armaments industry, it'd take five months to stockpile enough bombs to carry out a repeat, and that was assuming the factories they had didn't get repurposed to make some more vital piece of military equipment. LeMay was fine with that, he'd rather spend munitions than lives.
==*==
THE AMERICAN WEEKLY
US GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC
INFORMATION
10TH DECEMBER 2287
$1.99
BATTLE IN BOSTON
Yesterday, military sources recently confirmed, a major engagement was fought between the savage raiders of the
Greater Boston area and our brave boys in the US Armed Forces Massachusetts Expedition. The raiders, suspected to be cat's paws of the Californian rebels, tried to drive us out of the region but were defeated with no loss of civilian life. One hundred and twelve US soldiers gave their lives in the line of duty and will be interred next Sunday at Arlington National Cemetery among the thousands of others who gave their all for this great nation – our gallant President will personally deliver the eulogy with the President of the United American Church and the members of the Cabinet in attendance. Our allies in the region, having played an important part in eliminating them with a minimum of casualties, deserve no small accolade fort heir assistance and will be given one in due time.
Civilians are reminded not to travel to Massachusetts unless on pressing US Government business or under military escort.
Mad Jack entered Quincy with guns pointing at him from every side – assault rifles, laser and plasma guns, the weapons of assaultrons and sentry bots, even a couple nuclear catapults. The Gunners' name was not a misnomer. No one knew where they came from. Some said they crawled out of a Vault, product of some mad experiment to create the perfect warrior society. Others were sceptical and said they'd come from up
Ronto way, soldiers of the Governor-General who'd deserted en masse and headed
to New England to work as mercenaries. Some said it was both, or more. Whatever one thought about their origin, no-one dared cross them. Not after Quincy.
They'd razed the town, wiping out almost all the Minutemen sent to protect it, and ruled over its charred corpse. From then on, they'd done every kind of unscrupulous mercenary work imaginable. Want a caravan escorted? The Gunners would do it. Want your neighbour's farm burnt down? The Gunners would do it. Want a settlement destroyed – the men killed, women and children enslaved? The Gunners would do it, and with a spring in their step at that.
He looked at Clint, the Minuteman traitor who'd sold out the town to take rulership of it, and the two men stared at each other, a long contest of wills in which neither dared back off.
Finally, the former Minuteman broke the ice.
"What're you Raiders doing here in Quincy?" he asked, blunt and to the point. "We're honest mercs, doing honest business. Not like you."
"It's the motherfuckers who showed up a month ago," Jack explained. "I want an alliance between the two of us, to send them out of here."
"How many caps you got?"
"This ain't about caps, Mister General. These fuckers are taking down raider groups one by one across the Commonwealth. You think they won't hit you eventually after deciding that you're raiders? They've already allied with the Minutemen – do you think those fuckers have forgotten the licking you gave them here, will forgive you for betraying them, that they won't come here for payback? And do you really imagine they won't call on their new buddies in fancy power armour to help them?"
"Heh, you have a point. So what's your plan for kicking this lot out?"
"Simple – we divide our forces and take down Lexington and the Minutemen at once. Then take out the big motherfucking boat anchored outside the harbour. Then, reap the reward."
"Sounds like a plan. I'll lead the force I send against Fort Independence, Tessa the troops I send to Lexington, while Baker holds the fort here in Quincy. That good?"
"Sounds good. I'll lead our combined force against Lexington myself, if you don't mind."
"I'd be wary of that, Blackheart. History is full of men who led from the front and got killed 'cause of it."
"Like Hell I'll let some pansies from the Capital Wasteland and Philly take down Bloody Joe! The ass end of the whole waste, and now they say they want to rule over us!"
"That's the spirit."
"Yeah, it sure is!"
==*==
"So that confirms it," Whitley said. "The Institute uses teleportation to get around. I had my suspicions, but now it's confirmed."
"You know anything about that kind of science?" Nate asked. "I never heard of anything like that pre-War."
"It was top secret, developed from reverse-engineered ... foreign technology by a government think tank at the Big Mountain facility in California. CIT must have either rediscovered it independently or gained access to the requisite files somehow. We know it's possible, we know they did it, but the specifics of the process were never shared with the regular military or government."
"So far as my knowledge goes – I'm no quantum physicist - teleportation is a controlled quantum tunnelling event. One ceases to be here and begins to be there. But there are limitations. Mass is the biggest. Power scales up exponentially beyond human mass, you can just about teleport a man in power armour and you can forget about anything heavier. Range is also an issue. And the last is that you need a carrier wave."
"A carrier wave?"
"Yes, an electromagnetic wavelength broadcast to stabilise the quantum entanglement between two regions of spacetime. What our method of blocking teleportation does is block the carrier wave in a region and prevent you from sending material objects to or from the defended location by making it impossible to get a lock. We sent a satellite one day before the nukes to broadcast a carrier wave over an entire hemisphere – contact with our orbital grid hasn't been fully re-established yet but we think it crashed in 2280, somewhere in the South-West."
"Very bad timing."
"It would've gone up a month earlier but there was a shipping error in vital parts. What a shame! If we'd had that up when we planned we could've sent soldiers straight into Cheng's bunker, captured him and the Party leadership, and then forced China into an unconditional surrender. "
And Nora wouldn't have been murdered, Nate thought. I'd have never lost Shaun. And ... the world wouldn't have gone nowhere for two hundred years.
"Are ... are you okay?"
"I'm fine," Nate replied. "Just ... thinking about the past."
A knock came loudly on the door and Nate opened it. A military secretary was standing at the entrance to Whitley's office – golden-blonde haired with grass-green eyes, she looked immaculate wearing a navy-blue military jacket over a white blouse, her skirt falling down to her knees. She herself couldn't help but blush and flash a smile on seeing him, before urgently stating what she had to say.
"Mr. Washington," the girl said. "The President wishes to meet with you."
"Is it urgent?"
"No."
"Can you please wait outside ten minutes, then?"
The secretary adjusted her cap, and then closed the door. Nate realised suddenly, and with a touch of disappointment, that he hadn't even gotten to read her nametag.
"Do you know anything about assaultrons?" he asked Whitley.
"Well, I'm an expert in robotics. What did you want to ask?"
"I have a blank Assaultron body I came by recently while ... looking for supplies. With no OS installed, I was hoping-"
"You should know well that private ownership of military-grade robots isn't allowed by the Second Amendment! The Supreme Court ruled in-"
"Is it possible for the General of the Minutemen to have an Assaultron assigned to him on permanent bodyguard duty?"
"Yes, that can work."
"Very well."
The secretary knocked on the door again, and this time Nate let her lead him to one of the vertibird pads. She waved him off as he got in (still didn't get her name!) and a pilot flew him to USS Richardson.
The view from above the Commonwealth was breathtaking, if it didn't offset the chill of the winter air as it flew against the wind to the great aircraft carrier. The President was standing on the flight deck awaiting him, wearing his field coat – Nate noted a colonel's rank insignia - and carrying a box ofmedals.
"I've been waiting for you ten minutes longer than I should have," he said. "What delayed you?"
"Saying my goodbyes to Dr. Whitley, Mr. President," Nate replied. "The man's brilliant at what he does."
"Indeed. Though sometimes he needs a little pushing, just like Dr. Wilzig. I once had to threaten to scrap one of his favourite eyebots to get him to move forward on a major project. He's never really gotten over it."
"I can imagine."
"Anyway, these are your medals."
There were several – the Purple Heart he'd earned from the shrapnel injury at Fairbanks, the Canada Annexation Medal with its maple-leaf design, the Medal of Honor he'd won at Anchorage, and another one – a gold cross similar to the Distinguished Service Cross with the date "2077" on the reverse side – with several others along.
"What medal is that?" Nate asked.
"Only the rarest military decoration in the entire Armed Forces," the President replied. "The World War Three Victory Cross. The only other man awarded with it is your friend Elliot in the Marines. The other medals are replacements for those you earned before whichyou lost when your home was destroyed."
"I suppose we won the War in the end," Nate shrugged. "Even if the victory was more Pyrrhic than anything else."
Just then a military aide rushed out onto the deck of the Richardson, panting furiously.
"Mr. President!" he yelled. "The raiders are massing for an attack! This is it!"
"You head back to Lexington with me," Autumn said. "I'll get data on the situation, then we'll show these bastardshow a real army fights!"
Nate followed Autumn to Air Force One, surprised he was actually getting to fly on it as they rushed back to Lexington. Autumn quickly headed into the main command centre, but not before requisitioning Nate a US Army motorbike and telling him to gather up the Minutemen.
==*==
"What's the sitrep?" President Autumn asked, looking over the map of Boston and environs digitally displayed on the command centre's table. Colonel Bradley, the military governor and officially the man in charge of the expedition, could hear the rough tone in his voice. It was a tone he hadn't heard the President use in years.
"Our aerial scouts have discovered a large force of raiders and Gunners heading north towards Lexington," Bradley explained. "Along with a smaller force made up solely of Gunners heading towards our allies' main base. "
"How long can we hold out?"
"Indefinitely, but we'd be leaving the civvies out to dry if we did. We don't have enough space here to hold them, and it'd strain our food supplies."
"Well then, we go out to meet them. Tanks, artillery, infantry, air support, the works. As for the Gunners attacking Fort Independence, relay my orders to Onassis at Boston Airport that she's to intercept them with her Marines."
"We don't have enough artillery pieces in theatre," Bradley noted.
"Our local allies can take up the slack," Autumn said.
"Wasteland militiamen? Do you really-"
"We'll make real US soldiers out of them, give it time. We've done it before and we'll do it again."
Sirens blared as troops hurriedly got into power armour, tanks revved their engines, artillery guns turned southwards, and vertibirds prepared to fly.
"Men of the US Army Third Infantry Division! First Armoured Division!" Autumn's voice rang out as he spoke to the men. He allowed himself a slight smile – one of the things he'd learned to enjoy about politics was giving speeches. Turned out he was naturally good at it. "US Air Force 5th Vertibird Wing! And last but most certainly not least US Marine Corps 1st Marine Division!"
"Today a bunch of raiders are thinking that they could tangle with us, to threaten Lexington Air Force Base and our native allies in the Boston region. Today we teach them otherwise! Today we slaughter those bastards like the human hogs they are! Today we cut them down by the bushel! Today we wipe them off the face of planet Earth! Remember, we are fighting - as we always have - for the American people! We cannot let them down!"
"We're not just going to shoot these human animals; we're going to crush them under the treads of our tanks till they're just a red smear on the ground; we're going to set them on fire with thermite; we're going to reduce them to green goo with plasma weapons; we're going to turn their world into one long symphony of fire, thunder and pain with everything in our arsenal until death comes as an undeserved mercy. "
"And one last thing, in light of the recent news from the West Coast: Remember Navarro!"
"REMEMBER NAVARRO!" the troops replied and began preparing to march out.
Autumn smiled; most of these boys and girls had never heard of Navarro before a few weeks ago, and now they were ready to march out to avenge it. It was a mix of things, he knew – they believed in the cause, the one he'd tortured and killed and fought bloody battles for. Every atrocity, every killing and underhanded tactic and ruthless act, had been for America and her people – the lawful government had shown itself to be the ones who could save America, wake her up from her wasteland nightmare. If God hadn't raised him up to do this, to save the government from its own madness and save America from her torment, who else could He have chosen? And they loved him, loved their Commander-in-Chief. That was why there'd been no real contenders after he'd done away with Eden. His men would march into Hell itself if he ordered it. He felt more than a flicker of pride in that.
==*==
Somerville Place was a well-equipped, if small, farming community which had recently turned back towards the Minutemen and started supporting them. As a result, three artillery pieces had been set up in the town to dissuade a raider attack. Now with the news about a force of raiders marching northward toward Lexington, the guns were being turned north-eastward, toward the old Coast Guard pier. They got the order to fire just at 11:00 AM, as US forces were still about a quarter of an hour away from first contact with the enemy.
All the Minutemen Nate could rustle up on such short notice had already been positioned in a copse of trees by the road, in a prime space for an ambush. Though they weren't enough to beat the force on an even footing, they'd damage enemy morale and kill any leaders so as to force them to break all the sooner.
They were just past the Coast Guard pier when the explosions started. The first one consumed the lead vehicle of the Road Warriors, taking down their leader, Butcher Mac, in an instant. The second took down three other vehicles, and the third killed thirteen raiders.
The column of raiders pulled back and prepared for battle, seeking to get out of range of the enemy artillery.
Nate watched from the treeline with about five hundred minutemen and Kleo. Much as he was interested in Piper (can't stop thinking about that army girl either, dammit!I), he couldn't deny that her new body was certainly easy on the eyes. But still, would Nora have-
He killed that thought. The pain just hurt too much.
"When do we get to open fire?" she impatiently asked, trying to crouch while carrying a Gatling laser. She'd immediately gone for the biggest gun in the Castle's armoury, and Nate had a feeling she was somewhat disappointed she wasn't strong enough to lift one of the mortars newly installed on the walls of the old fortress.
"When I give the order and not a moment sooner," Nate said. "Try and aim for the major targets. Ones that look like they're leaders. The more confused the raiders are, the easier the military will take them out."
"Okay," she said. "That I can handle. My tactical programming is currently running combat scenarios, and I can't sayour odds look good, baby."
"Why do you call me that?"
"It's a lot better than, "Owner Nate"isn't it? I thought you might like the personal touch."
"Please try not to use it, at leastright now. Call me "Sir" or "General"."
"As you wish, General."
Somehow she managed to make that seem just as sultry as her previous term of choice.
The moment Nate saw the first US Army tanks from his position he gave his first and final order of the battle.
"Minutemen! Fire at will on the enemy!"
A hurricane of firepower poured out from the woods into the raiders' flank.
==*==
Mad Jack couldn't believe how it was going. These bastards didn't just have tanks, they had fucking artillery! Every few seconds, one of their fucking guns miles away would open fire, there'd be a whistling sound, and then an explosion would blast apart another group of raiders. Some were coming from the north, some from the south-west, but he didn't have a clue how many were from each direction, or
even which was which.
And the fucking tanks. Firing some kind of bright blue beam from their main turrets, they'd wreck the vehicles. And with their Gatling lasers they'd carve through the men like Thanksgiving turkey. And they crushed people under their fucking treads until they were
smeared all over the ground like a thin red paste.
Not to mention the fucking snipers they apparently had in the woods taking out all the leaders! It was becoming a total rout as groups bled away from the main force, hoping to escape and survive. Finally only a small desperate core was left around him, enemy troops
in powered armour moving to wipe out the last dregs of organised resistance.
"I surrender!" he cried. "I fucking surrender!"
The power armoured giant before him said only one thing.
"Unfortunately, we don't accept surrenders from your kind."
Then a flurry of laser rounds struck him in the chest and he died like a dog in the bloody mud.
==*==
Preston Garvey was not in a good position. Gunners were assaulting the Castle, about three hundred in total. He shivered - would this be like Quincy all over again? We only lost that one 'cause we were betrayed, he tried to remind himself. He had one hundred Minutemen and a sentry bot. At least it wasn't raining or snowing right now, even if it looked like it might at any moment. That would have been the perfect cherry on top of such a bad day.
"They're approaching the gate, Colonel," one of his subordinates said breathlessly. "If only we had forewarning of an attack, we could have done something. Called in the patrols, laid a minefield, anything!"
"How's the artillery doing?"
"Mortar 1 is down, got hit by a missile. The others are doing fine; we're bombarding the Gunners as you ordered. But they've got three sentry bots and the turrets aren't doing much. If this goes on-"
A loud siren interrupted him, followed by a hearty, chest-thumping battlecry.
"OO-RAH!"
Preston rushed out of the General's quarters and to the walls to see what exactly was happening, ducking his head behind a crenellation to avoid sniper fire.
Troops in US military Power Armour were hitting the Gunners hard, vertibirds clearing them out from the nearby rooftops and firing on the sentry bots. That was Preston's cue to order a counter-offensive. Focusing their fire, the artillery managed to disable the sentry bots and suppress the enemy as they fought to the last man. At the battle's end, thirty-five Minutemen and seventeen US Marines were dead, with three vertibirds down.
Preston looked at Clint's face, lying there on the shore, with no gladness but only an odd sense of satisfaction. The Quincy Massacre had been avenged, with its instigator dead, his treason finally punished.
==*==
The battle was over. The raider army of three thousand had broken, with about five hundred dead and six hundred wounded. Not that the wounded stayed wounded for long, because all of them were just summarily shot by the US troops. The rest of course, broke and ran in all directions. Hunting them all down would take weeks, perhaps months.
Amidst the smoking vehicles and bodies being burnt on the field, Nate felt ... ill at ease. This was like Canada all over again, like the insurgency years and that … that day. That one POW hadn't been the only one he'd seen shot after surrendering, but that was the moment that always stuck in his memory. He'd restrained the Minutemen from taking part in the killing, wanting them to keep their innocence even as the young men chafed at the bit to take revenge on the raiders, but he hadn't tried to stop the US troops from involving themselves in the massacre. Maybe I should have, he thought. But then – they didn't have a proper prison to hold so many hardened criminals here yet, or any way to launch a proper investigation as to their crimes. It was ... the only solution rightnow, much as he hated to admit it. He hoped there'd be a better one soon, but what could be done right now?
Danse put it more simply talking after the battle was over.
"They had it coming," was all he said, and Nate couldn't help but nod.
==*==
"We licked 'em," Autumn said, the faces of Keller, Henshaw and Duplessis around him as he video-conferenced withb them from the Lexington command centre. "I was expecting a lot more casualties."
"Eighty-two Army men, ten vertibird pilots, and twenty Marines are casualties enough," Henshaw said. "Not to mention that cracking Quincy is going to cost many more. Our local allies can take what seems to be the raiders' main base, near Plymouth, but the Gunners have fortified Quincy well enough to make a vertibird insertion too risky, and it's surrounded by swamps, making an armoured or powered assault untenable. We can besiege them, but it'll tie down too many troops"
"Right now I'm thinking of Alexander and the Gordian knot. Centuries of people tried to unravel it with skill, but Alexander was the only one who ever succeeded. He just took his sword and cut it in two where generations before him had failed."
"What're you talking about, Mr. President?"
"I'm suggesting we carpet bomb the bastards."
"Why not deploy some of the supply of Curling-13?" Duplessis suggested. "It'd preserve the local infra-"
"With the wind patterns around here, it'd likely hit civilians or even our own troops as well. And Curling-13 is much more deadly than nuclear fallout. Fallout, you can take rad drugs if you're exposed and you'll be okay if you do it quickly enough – I'm proof of that. Curling-13? You breathe in or ingest one part per million and you're a dead man walking. There's a reason we keep it on ice in the most secure
under-levels of Raven Rock, and it's not to keep it from going off. Not to mention it wouldn't touch any war robots they still have."
"The President is correct," Kellersaid. "An incendiary air raid would tax our munitions supply, but it would deal with the Gunners with minimal losses to civilians. Rebuilding and resettling the town will be a simple matter after that."
"Very well," Duplessis said. "I'll have the orders relayed to Captain Harrison at Adams AFB."
==*==
Flight Captain Stuart LeMay, descendant of a famous 20th century general, checked his instruments, confirming that his B-95 Dragon strategic bomber was safely en route to the target. In years gone by long before his time, looking out from his cockpit he would have seen a whole galaxy of lights, the gleam of vehicles and buildings covering the ground in brilliant carpets of illumination linked by the gossamer strands of highways; nowadays, all a pilot could see from the air were the occasional gleams of campfires and the occasional glowing green rad-zone. One day, all that beauty would be restored. He may die well before it happened, but he knew it would happen. Some way or another, the lawful government would finally hold sway over all former US territory and it'd be as if the War had never happened. That was the Enclave's goal, and he'd help see it through.
"ETA at target is five minutes," the Captain's voice blared over the comms. "Prepare to loose bombs on my mark."
LeMay knew the armament he was carrying. Twenty incendiary bombs, each including 360 thermite bomblets, were stored in his plane. Multiplied by the number of planes in the squadron, that meant 300 bombs, and a total of 108,000 bomblets ready to fall on the enemy position. They'd be dumb, unguided munitions, but quantity would be enough to wipe out the bastards. Apparently they had enough missile launchers to make a vertibird drop untenable, but no real SAMs or lasers. That meant his plane, cruising at 30,000 feet, was perfectly safe from any retaliation.
"Pilots, bombs away. Send the bastards to Hell."
He pulled the lever and the bomb bay doors of his plane opened, releasing his cargo of incendiaries over Quincy. The firestorm started seconds later, a whirling inferno visible from Fort Independence as it destroyed everything in its wake. Robots shut down as they overheated, some even exploding like mini-nukes as their fusion plants melted down. Buildings were reduced to ashes, ravaged by the fires and burned to their foundations. And everybody in the town died. Whether by the fires or by asphyxiation as the oxygen was consumed by the towering inferno, they died to a man. The planes returned to Adams AFB, their mission completed. But it had been a costly one as such things went – though thankfully not in lives. With the current state of the armaments industry, it'd take five months to stockpile enough bombs to carry out a repeat, and that was assuming the factories they had didn't get repurposed to make some more vital piece of military equipment. LeMay was fine with that, he'd rather spend munitions than lives.
==*==
THE AMERICAN WEEKLY
US GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC
INFORMATION
10TH DECEMBER 2287
$1.99
BATTLE IN BOSTON
Yesterday, military sources recently confirmed, a major engagement was fought between the savage raiders of the
Greater Boston area and our brave boys in the US Armed Forces Massachusetts Expedition. The raiders, suspected to be cat's paws of the Californian rebels, tried to drive us out of the region but were defeated with no loss of civilian life. One hundred and twelve US soldiers gave their lives in the line of duty and will be interred next Sunday at Arlington National Cemetery among the thousands of others who gave their all for this great nation – our gallant President will personally deliver the eulogy with the President of the United American Church and the members of the Cabinet in attendance. Our allies in the region, having played an important part in eliminating them with a minimum of casualties, deserve no small accolade fort heir assistance and will be given one in due time.
Civilians are reminded not to travel to Massachusetts unless on pressing US Government business or under military escort.
Ihopethisworks
God Bless the Enclave
I think you forgot to threadmark the chapter.