Fallout The Eagle And The Bear [Fallout AU]
- Thread starter Navarro
- Start date
Chapter Thirteen: The Other Side of the Coin
Navarro
Well-known member
20:00 EST, 31 November 2331
One Observatory Circle, Washington DC
The sitting room of the Vice Presidential Residence, at Number 1 Observatory Circle, was both more and less than what Leonardo Alvarez expected of the American Vice-President’s dwelling place. It was immaculately clean, but laid out in a style of understated pre-War middle-class domesticity. And even then, it was beyond impressive in other ways. From the kitchen, he could hear the sounds of a domestic robot busily at work – in front of him sat an advanced form of television – a wide, thin screen, it had far greater fidelity – with colour – than the CRT devices that were all Rio had been able to make. A “plasma screen”, the Vice President had called it, commenting that it was one of the many pieces of technology banned from export across the Americas.
Leonardo Alvarez looked at Leopold Richardson – the American was immaculately groomed as ever. Even here, with his wife waiting on the two politicians, he maintained a show of dominance. His suit was immaculately tailored, and the fingers of his right-hand were constantly running to and fro over the glossy, polished screen of his pip-boy personal computer. It was perhaps a snub that he had been unable to contact the American President directly, but he most likely knew anyway of his arrival.
The past month had been terrible indeed – the Iturbide armies had moved faster and with more tactical prowess than they had any right to. The border forts had been expertly cut off and taken, and the army’s very own response to the invasion had been deftly worked around. Almost as if the Imperial forces had gained knowledge of Rio’s own counter-invasion protocols.
“You promised to help us with California,” Alvarez said plainly. “In September.”
“And it is not California that is the source of your … current problem.” Richardson spoke in a circumlocutory style, better suited to polite society. “At any rate, we are suffering … difficulties in the mid-west. The situation has changed in the past three months.”
“My people will be made serfs of the hidalgos in Veracruz and Mexico City if you let the Iturbide dynasty add Rio to their holdings. They’ve been trying to do it for decades, and with each defeat their hatred for and desire to humiliate us has only grown stronger. Our economy, our government, our culture … all of it will be obliterated. Replaced with a peonage straight out of the 14th century.”
“Should we succeed in our objectives, we will have much of our own territory to rebuild after the war. Being frank here, there’s pretty much no public support for a campaign against the Iturbides, especially if it draws us into a lengthy effort to rebuild foreign territory for no immediate gain. Look, I’ll never speak as plain with you as I am now. There is only one thing you could agree to that would have us drive out your enemies from the Rio Grande.”
Alvarez almost didn’t dare to ask the question of what it was.
“And that is?”
“The Republic of the Rio Grande would petition to join the United States once the military operations were completed.”
He looked to the American – his face was still unsympathetic, cold. He had a point, but could he … ?
Better freedom under a foreign flag than slavery under the Iturbides.
But still …
“I recommend if you were to make your decision, make it now.”
Richardson’s voice was concerned, but tinged with an undertone of smugness. It repelled him. But in the end, what could he do?
==*==
15:00 EST, December 1 2331
71st Floor, The Panopticon Building, Washington DC
Martha Fairchild’s office was immaculate. A glazed marble floor was interrupted only by a stainless metal desk and four walls of black stone. On the wall opposite the entrance stood the seal of the CIA carved in bas-relief. It comforted her, reminiscent as it was of her childhood on ELECT.
A floor below were the Special Recon and Special Interrogation divisions of the CIA, worked by … individuals with unique capabilities (Special Forecasting stood empty after its prognostications had proved too unreliable and reliant on interpretation, but the agents formerly assigned there could be re-activated at any moment). Two floors below were chambers where illegal technology confiscated from CIT’s divisions of Robotics and Synth Retention was made use of by FBI counter-intelligence. On this floor were the offices of the Joint Intelligence Chiefs – the directors of the CIA, NSA, and FBI counterintel unit (which was to be split from their policing branch in a few months’ time). Above this floor was only the meeting room used by them, which also had seats for the heads of the military intelligence services. The rest was filled with thousands on thousands of bureaucrats and functionaries, collating data and preparing intelligence operations across three continents.
She adjusted her chair to a more comfortable position and on her computer opened a document she had recently received via e-mail – a proposal to bring down the Mexican Empire via the deliberate spreading of communist ideology (received from ideological literature available only in Europe) in the hope of bringing it to full-blown revolution. She looked over it again – the Empire was a feudal semi-absolute monarchy, partially industrialised (primarily in military matters) but still a nation consisting of a great mass of peasants and a comparatively small circle of aristocratic elites, with a razor-thin middle class between them. Such a social structure, with no chances of social advancement within the system itself, lent itself well to a call for the violent dissolution of said system. The android technology of CIT would be perfect for introducing the necessary agents provocateurs into the Iturbide dominion (which did not possess the medical technology to tell the difference) – then within a decade or two, all hell would break loose. Obsolete weapons would be funneled into the movement, ensuring it had the strength to bring down the dons and hidalgos. And then …
For a year or two – perhaps five, at the most – after taking power the Reds would be permitted to rampage to their hearts’ content, while Federal News Network and the privately-owned broadcasters breathlessly reported each lurid atrocity to a horrified nation. In the end, under great public pressure, the US military would be deployed to rout the communist threat – and in the aftermath a system of American military governance would be set up over much of central and southern Mexico. In time those regions would be annexed into the Union, first as Territories then as States.
She bit her lip. According to the document approximately 300,000 to 500,000 were estimated to die as a result of the plan – from the initial violence and purges alone. The famines the civil war and collectivisation of agriculture would cause could well double that number. She took a deep breath. Those who survived would see the American troops not as invaders and conquerers but as liberators and restorers of order – which they would be. She reminded herself again of how the wasteland had been tamed by the American government, and thought on how Mexico’s cycles of violence and corruption would finally be ended once the region was incorporated into the United States.
Well, at least I'm not totally heartless, she sardonically mused to herself.
The benefit would be well worth the cost. The President did not need to know the full details of the plan to approve it; by tomorrow a summary of the scheme (codenamed Operation Cortez), with certain elements … downplayed, would be on his desk, awaiting his approval.
==*==
14:47 CST, 5th December 2331
State of Illinois, Great Lakes Commonwealth
He was dancing under the moonbeams, in a park near the centre of the Boneyard. In his arms was Maggie, looking as she had when they had first met. The stars were out, a spray of diamonds across the black velvet of the night sky, and the yellow lights of the city skyline gleamed in the distance, reflecting off the ring on her finger, not from then, I know. Before he knew it, the scene had changed and he was staring into the eyes of a corpse – a leather-faced victim of the desert, hair stringy and matted, face half fallen off to expose white bone. Her silken dress had turned into the dress uniform of an NCR ranger, ragged and dirty.
He looked around, and the park’s trees were charred skeletons, and the skyline was in ruins, and the sky was the colour of fire. Everything around him was burning, and yet he was so terribly cold. He tried to get away, but Maggie’s skeletal corpse-hands held him fast with a grip of iron, freezing the blood in his veins, and as he tried to break free her eyes gripped him even harder than her hands, so he was forced to look into the fires within, the burning city reflecting endlessly like a hall of mirrors-
General Lance Robertson woke with a start from his afternoon nap, head almost hitting the slanted wall of his command vehicle. The dream … it disturbed him more than any normal one should. It’s a reminder, he mused, of what’s at stake. The NCR had rebuilt so much, and it was all at risk. The work of a century and a half could be destroyed in a fraction of the time – it was easy to destroy, but so very, very hard to build.
It reminded him why he was fighting – not to destroy the enemy, but to protect the NCR from those that would destroy it. The situation wasn’t perfect, but while the Enclave threatened to destroy everything Aradesh and Tandi had built it couldn’t be improved. To devote effort towards suppressing the Brahmin Barons or breaking New Reno would only cause trouble, only divert energy from the long war against the old enemy – that was the dominant feeling. Once the war was over there would be no more excuses to avoid what had been a long time coming.
This should have been different of course. Ideally, it would have been happening on the onset of summer next year, in co-ordination with a southern thrust from Texas to attack the Gulf Coast and threaten the South. But fate had decided that it would be here and now.
He talked up to Stanislavski, one of the chief engineers, on his pip-boy, unhooking the portable computer from his belt.
“Have you made the necessary alterations to our AA laser platforms?” he asked tiredly.
“We’ve been working round the clock,” the man’s voice breathlessly came in from the other end of the wireless connection. “Approximately 90% complete. I have to ask, what makes you think they can take on the Enclave tanks head-to-head?”
“As I’ve made clear to the personnel of those units,” Robertson replied. “They’re not going to.”
He took a deep breath.
3 more days ‘till we meet the enemy. We better make this work.
-*-
Several hundred metres away, Sentinel Brandt mulled uneasily over his role in the plan of attack. While he had acted relatively independently, he had deferred to the NCR General’s authority whenever it had been in conflict with his own intuitions. He had no differences of opinion with the man’s tactical goals – it was his operational and strategic ones that put him into question. The important thing was denying the Enclave its war industry – not capturing city after city, leap-frogging from one to the other. While he understood the importance of the air base, even assuming a population eager to rise up in support of the NCR … the occupation forces that would be required to maintain order in each city would drain the offensive of its impetus, allowing room for a counter-offensive.
Given the partisan activity, to expect an immediate mutiny in the Enclave’s own forces on victory at Chicago was a fool’s gambit. Be it from the deployment of CODE or other brainwashing systems, or plain old indoctrination, it was most unlikely.
The NCR definitely wanted the Enclave’s industrial technology captured, not destroyed. For once in his life, Brandt considered that a mistake. Not only would they bog the whole operation down, but it would be of no benefit to the Brotherhood. The NCR was unlikely to share, and worse – Brandt knew how the NCR had betrayed the Brotherhood two decades after Navarro. He had no illusions as to who they intended to use those war-factories against once the Enclave was defeated.
Luckily, he had received word that the five Argo-class carrier airships possessed by the Brotherhood had recently finished maintenance to their fusion reactors and would be deployed to his forces in a week. The Brotherhood’s own forces were honed and lethal, a surgical knife well-polished and sharpened. Every officer rose from the ranks and fought on the front lines – every man on the field was a brother-in-arms who had known his superiors, subordinates and comrades from youth. That was the secret of the Brotherhood’s morale, which the NCR struggled to emulate. The militia were less capable, but they had the hope of promotion into the Brotherhood from acts of bravery on the field to spur them on. And with the mobility he would soon have ...
After the coming battle, Brandt would have no reason to play by the NCR’s plodding, methodical rules of warfare.
==*==
14:30 CST, 6th Devember 2331
State of Illinois, Great Lakes Commonwealth
Corporal James Fields looked out on the blinding whiteness from the armoured truck he was in, steadily trudging through the region. He could see dimly farms, and what might be a road or river in the near distance. Far as he could tell though, it was all enemy country.
He shivered, and not just from the cold. In two days, they would meet the Enclave army south-west of the pre-war town of Rockford. The same force that had smashed two NCR field armies in Texas would now be turned against them. General Robertson had promised he had a plan, though.
He looked to Private Castillo, a young woman from New Vegas who had joined up for similar reasons as he had. Though she was stand-offish, she had a nice smile whenever any of the others managed to make her do so. I’ll ask her out if we both make it through this, he mused.
He took out a cigarette pack from his knap-sack, lit it, and smoked it. He’d taken to smoking shortly after the offensive had started. It calmed his nerves like nothing else.
“So,” Private Casey said. “Enclave forces can’t be that tough, can they?”
“They’re ruthless as Hell,” Sergeant Harson said. “My old tribe – we were tribals, you know – were living in Arkansas when they started moving in. It was 30 to 25 years ago – can’t be sure, I was young.”
“The settled folks were first to fall in line. The towns and settlements received smiling men in business suits who got them to sign over their freedom with a hop and a skip – those few who refused to have anything to do with them were violently conquered, men in power armour jumping out of vertibirds in the town square and shooting any who shot back until they surrendered. Then they started putting pressure on the farmers, and before long most of them were toeing the Enclave line. And last they came for the tribals.”
“The Diamond-backs were the biggest tribe in the region. 1,000 warriors, 10,000 people. Their warriors would raid their neighbours every so often, but it was nothing serious. They were generally peaceable. Then they kept on raiding after the Enclave ‘pacified’ most of the region, and -”
“What happened?” Fields asked.
“Wiped out. Or at least, their largest settlement. Vertibirds, power armour, you know the drill. Every man, woman and elder slain – children were taken. To what I don’t want to know. We never liked them, but they didn’t deserve that kind of treatment.”
“It kept on going that way for a year or so after that. Elders would sell out their tribes for pre-war suburban houses and other technological luxuries. Families were forcibly split up – all taken to schools that would teach them the modern way of life, the Enclave said. I don’t know what became of them.”
“Our tribe split – half of us fell to the Enclave’s honeyed words, half of us decided to move west. We headed west till we hit Arizona, then the NCR managed to give our people a reservation. It’s not the best, but we can live according to our own traditions.”
Harson sighed.
“That’s the Enclave I want to get rid of. A grey wall of iron grinding from east to west, crushing everything beneath it. We have to stop it now.”
One Observatory Circle, Washington DC
The sitting room of the Vice Presidential Residence, at Number 1 Observatory Circle, was both more and less than what Leonardo Alvarez expected of the American Vice-President’s dwelling place. It was immaculately clean, but laid out in a style of understated pre-War middle-class domesticity. And even then, it was beyond impressive in other ways. From the kitchen, he could hear the sounds of a domestic robot busily at work – in front of him sat an advanced form of television – a wide, thin screen, it had far greater fidelity – with colour – than the CRT devices that were all Rio had been able to make. A “plasma screen”, the Vice President had called it, commenting that it was one of the many pieces of technology banned from export across the Americas.
Leonardo Alvarez looked at Leopold Richardson – the American was immaculately groomed as ever. Even here, with his wife waiting on the two politicians, he maintained a show of dominance. His suit was immaculately tailored, and the fingers of his right-hand were constantly running to and fro over the glossy, polished screen of his pip-boy personal computer. It was perhaps a snub that he had been unable to contact the American President directly, but he most likely knew anyway of his arrival.
The past month had been terrible indeed – the Iturbide armies had moved faster and with more tactical prowess than they had any right to. The border forts had been expertly cut off and taken, and the army’s very own response to the invasion had been deftly worked around. Almost as if the Imperial forces had gained knowledge of Rio’s own counter-invasion protocols.
“You promised to help us with California,” Alvarez said plainly. “In September.”
“And it is not California that is the source of your … current problem.” Richardson spoke in a circumlocutory style, better suited to polite society. “At any rate, we are suffering … difficulties in the mid-west. The situation has changed in the past three months.”
“My people will be made serfs of the hidalgos in Veracruz and Mexico City if you let the Iturbide dynasty add Rio to their holdings. They’ve been trying to do it for decades, and with each defeat their hatred for and desire to humiliate us has only grown stronger. Our economy, our government, our culture … all of it will be obliterated. Replaced with a peonage straight out of the 14th century.”
“Should we succeed in our objectives, we will have much of our own territory to rebuild after the war. Being frank here, there’s pretty much no public support for a campaign against the Iturbides, especially if it draws us into a lengthy effort to rebuild foreign territory for no immediate gain. Look, I’ll never speak as plain with you as I am now. There is only one thing you could agree to that would have us drive out your enemies from the Rio Grande.”
Alvarez almost didn’t dare to ask the question of what it was.
“And that is?”
“The Republic of the Rio Grande would petition to join the United States once the military operations were completed.”
He looked to the American – his face was still unsympathetic, cold. He had a point, but could he … ?
Better freedom under a foreign flag than slavery under the Iturbides.
But still …
“I recommend if you were to make your decision, make it now.”
Richardson’s voice was concerned, but tinged with an undertone of smugness. It repelled him. But in the end, what could he do?
==*==
15:00 EST, December 1 2331
71st Floor, The Panopticon Building, Washington DC
Martha Fairchild’s office was immaculate. A glazed marble floor was interrupted only by a stainless metal desk and four walls of black stone. On the wall opposite the entrance stood the seal of the CIA carved in bas-relief. It comforted her, reminiscent as it was of her childhood on ELECT.
A floor below were the Special Recon and Special Interrogation divisions of the CIA, worked by … individuals with unique capabilities (Special Forecasting stood empty after its prognostications had proved too unreliable and reliant on interpretation, but the agents formerly assigned there could be re-activated at any moment). Two floors below were chambers where illegal technology confiscated from CIT’s divisions of Robotics and Synth Retention was made use of by FBI counter-intelligence. On this floor were the offices of the Joint Intelligence Chiefs – the directors of the CIA, NSA, and FBI counterintel unit (which was to be split from their policing branch in a few months’ time). Above this floor was only the meeting room used by them, which also had seats for the heads of the military intelligence services. The rest was filled with thousands on thousands of bureaucrats and functionaries, collating data and preparing intelligence operations across three continents.
She adjusted her chair to a more comfortable position and on her computer opened a document she had recently received via e-mail – a proposal to bring down the Mexican Empire via the deliberate spreading of communist ideology (received from ideological literature available only in Europe) in the hope of bringing it to full-blown revolution. She looked over it again – the Empire was a feudal semi-absolute monarchy, partially industrialised (primarily in military matters) but still a nation consisting of a great mass of peasants and a comparatively small circle of aristocratic elites, with a razor-thin middle class between them. Such a social structure, with no chances of social advancement within the system itself, lent itself well to a call for the violent dissolution of said system. The android technology of CIT would be perfect for introducing the necessary agents provocateurs into the Iturbide dominion (which did not possess the medical technology to tell the difference) – then within a decade or two, all hell would break loose. Obsolete weapons would be funneled into the movement, ensuring it had the strength to bring down the dons and hidalgos. And then …
For a year or two – perhaps five, at the most – after taking power the Reds would be permitted to rampage to their hearts’ content, while Federal News Network and the privately-owned broadcasters breathlessly reported each lurid atrocity to a horrified nation. In the end, under great public pressure, the US military would be deployed to rout the communist threat – and in the aftermath a system of American military governance would be set up over much of central and southern Mexico. In time those regions would be annexed into the Union, first as Territories then as States.
She bit her lip. According to the document approximately 300,000 to 500,000 were estimated to die as a result of the plan – from the initial violence and purges alone. The famines the civil war and collectivisation of agriculture would cause could well double that number. She took a deep breath. Those who survived would see the American troops not as invaders and conquerers but as liberators and restorers of order – which they would be. She reminded herself again of how the wasteland had been tamed by the American government, and thought on how Mexico’s cycles of violence and corruption would finally be ended once the region was incorporated into the United States.
Well, at least I'm not totally heartless, she sardonically mused to herself.
The benefit would be well worth the cost. The President did not need to know the full details of the plan to approve it; by tomorrow a summary of the scheme (codenamed Operation Cortez), with certain elements … downplayed, would be on his desk, awaiting his approval.
==*==
14:47 CST, 5th December 2331
State of Illinois, Great Lakes Commonwealth
He was dancing under the moonbeams, in a park near the centre of the Boneyard. In his arms was Maggie, looking as she had when they had first met. The stars were out, a spray of diamonds across the black velvet of the night sky, and the yellow lights of the city skyline gleamed in the distance, reflecting off the ring on her finger, not from then, I know. Before he knew it, the scene had changed and he was staring into the eyes of a corpse – a leather-faced victim of the desert, hair stringy and matted, face half fallen off to expose white bone. Her silken dress had turned into the dress uniform of an NCR ranger, ragged and dirty.
He looked around, and the park’s trees were charred skeletons, and the skyline was in ruins, and the sky was the colour of fire. Everything around him was burning, and yet he was so terribly cold. He tried to get away, but Maggie’s skeletal corpse-hands held him fast with a grip of iron, freezing the blood in his veins, and as he tried to break free her eyes gripped him even harder than her hands, so he was forced to look into the fires within, the burning city reflecting endlessly like a hall of mirrors-
General Lance Robertson woke with a start from his afternoon nap, head almost hitting the slanted wall of his command vehicle. The dream … it disturbed him more than any normal one should. It’s a reminder, he mused, of what’s at stake. The NCR had rebuilt so much, and it was all at risk. The work of a century and a half could be destroyed in a fraction of the time – it was easy to destroy, but so very, very hard to build.
It reminded him why he was fighting – not to destroy the enemy, but to protect the NCR from those that would destroy it. The situation wasn’t perfect, but while the Enclave threatened to destroy everything Aradesh and Tandi had built it couldn’t be improved. To devote effort towards suppressing the Brahmin Barons or breaking New Reno would only cause trouble, only divert energy from the long war against the old enemy – that was the dominant feeling. Once the war was over there would be no more excuses to avoid what had been a long time coming.
This should have been different of course. Ideally, it would have been happening on the onset of summer next year, in co-ordination with a southern thrust from Texas to attack the Gulf Coast and threaten the South. But fate had decided that it would be here and now.
He talked up to Stanislavski, one of the chief engineers, on his pip-boy, unhooking the portable computer from his belt.
“Have you made the necessary alterations to our AA laser platforms?” he asked tiredly.
“We’ve been working round the clock,” the man’s voice breathlessly came in from the other end of the wireless connection. “Approximately 90% complete. I have to ask, what makes you think they can take on the Enclave tanks head-to-head?”
“As I’ve made clear to the personnel of those units,” Robertson replied. “They’re not going to.”
He took a deep breath.
3 more days ‘till we meet the enemy. We better make this work.
-*-
Several hundred metres away, Sentinel Brandt mulled uneasily over his role in the plan of attack. While he had acted relatively independently, he had deferred to the NCR General’s authority whenever it had been in conflict with his own intuitions. He had no differences of opinion with the man’s tactical goals – it was his operational and strategic ones that put him into question. The important thing was denying the Enclave its war industry – not capturing city after city, leap-frogging from one to the other. While he understood the importance of the air base, even assuming a population eager to rise up in support of the NCR … the occupation forces that would be required to maintain order in each city would drain the offensive of its impetus, allowing room for a counter-offensive.
Given the partisan activity, to expect an immediate mutiny in the Enclave’s own forces on victory at Chicago was a fool’s gambit. Be it from the deployment of CODE or other brainwashing systems, or plain old indoctrination, it was most unlikely.
The NCR definitely wanted the Enclave’s industrial technology captured, not destroyed. For once in his life, Brandt considered that a mistake. Not only would they bog the whole operation down, but it would be of no benefit to the Brotherhood. The NCR was unlikely to share, and worse – Brandt knew how the NCR had betrayed the Brotherhood two decades after Navarro. He had no illusions as to who they intended to use those war-factories against once the Enclave was defeated.
Luckily, he had received word that the five Argo-class carrier airships possessed by the Brotherhood had recently finished maintenance to their fusion reactors and would be deployed to his forces in a week. The Brotherhood’s own forces were honed and lethal, a surgical knife well-polished and sharpened. Every officer rose from the ranks and fought on the front lines – every man on the field was a brother-in-arms who had known his superiors, subordinates and comrades from youth. That was the secret of the Brotherhood’s morale, which the NCR struggled to emulate. The militia were less capable, but they had the hope of promotion into the Brotherhood from acts of bravery on the field to spur them on. And with the mobility he would soon have ...
After the coming battle, Brandt would have no reason to play by the NCR’s plodding, methodical rules of warfare.
==*==
14:30 CST, 6th Devember 2331
State of Illinois, Great Lakes Commonwealth
Corporal James Fields looked out on the blinding whiteness from the armoured truck he was in, steadily trudging through the region. He could see dimly farms, and what might be a road or river in the near distance. Far as he could tell though, it was all enemy country.
He shivered, and not just from the cold. In two days, they would meet the Enclave army south-west of the pre-war town of Rockford. The same force that had smashed two NCR field armies in Texas would now be turned against them. General Robertson had promised he had a plan, though.
He looked to Private Castillo, a young woman from New Vegas who had joined up for similar reasons as he had. Though she was stand-offish, she had a nice smile whenever any of the others managed to make her do so. I’ll ask her out if we both make it through this, he mused.
He took out a cigarette pack from his knap-sack, lit it, and smoked it. He’d taken to smoking shortly after the offensive had started. It calmed his nerves like nothing else.
“So,” Private Casey said. “Enclave forces can’t be that tough, can they?”
“They’re ruthless as Hell,” Sergeant Harson said. “My old tribe – we were tribals, you know – were living in Arkansas when they started moving in. It was 30 to 25 years ago – can’t be sure, I was young.”
“The settled folks were first to fall in line. The towns and settlements received smiling men in business suits who got them to sign over their freedom with a hop and a skip – those few who refused to have anything to do with them were violently conquered, men in power armour jumping out of vertibirds in the town square and shooting any who shot back until they surrendered. Then they started putting pressure on the farmers, and before long most of them were toeing the Enclave line. And last they came for the tribals.”
“The Diamond-backs were the biggest tribe in the region. 1,000 warriors, 10,000 people. Their warriors would raid their neighbours every so often, but it was nothing serious. They were generally peaceable. Then they kept on raiding after the Enclave ‘pacified’ most of the region, and -”
“What happened?” Fields asked.
“Wiped out. Or at least, their largest settlement. Vertibirds, power armour, you know the drill. Every man, woman and elder slain – children were taken. To what I don’t want to know. We never liked them, but they didn’t deserve that kind of treatment.”
“It kept on going that way for a year or so after that. Elders would sell out their tribes for pre-war suburban houses and other technological luxuries. Families were forcibly split up – all taken to schools that would teach them the modern way of life, the Enclave said. I don’t know what became of them.”
“Our tribe split – half of us fell to the Enclave’s honeyed words, half of us decided to move west. We headed west till we hit Arizona, then the NCR managed to give our people a reservation. It’s not the best, but we can live according to our own traditions.”
Harson sighed.
“That’s the Enclave I want to get rid of. A grey wall of iron grinding from east to west, crushing everything beneath it. We have to stop it now.”
Last edited:
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
Still surprisingly nice even then
Course, gotta ask, did those tribals really think continuing raiding would be a good idea? Or were they forced by circumstance to raid
Also, I'm kinda surprised that South America doesn't seem to have Communist States, were any of the Cartels descended by things like Che Guevarra's stuff
Floridaman
Well-known member
I would argue it was there before, you just had to read between the lines.
Navarro
Well-known member
This is what I get for not liking to sledgehammer my audience ...
Navarro
Well-known member
In FOverse the idea failed twice, so I don't see E-USA planning on a repeat.
TyrantTriumphant
Well-known member
For all the good they do, the Enclave are still Imperialists. Since people tend to like their traditions and autonomy, any conquering force has to be brutal to assimilate conquests. The only reason it hasn't been worse is that most of the people the Enclave has conquered have has a common heritage from pre-war America.
f1onagher
Well-known member
Nah I'm good.
Yeah, but it was a lot of in-between and not a lot of lines. The above fits about what I figured the Encalve was up to but seeing it happen does make it significantly more apparent.
Sometimes you need to break out the ball-peen, especially on projects this long. Beyond that, the issues were always more comparative than absolute.
There were always going to be parties getting rolled over as the proper nation-states began to retake the world. Tribals sore that a little raiding is no longer tolerated is definitely a common theme anywhere proper governance took back over and I doubt their former victims will miss them much. The Enclave is a lot more hegemonic, homogenous, and ruthless than the majority of their alternatives though. The world will conform to their vision or be forced to conform and all dissent will be crushed, subverted, or conquered. So if your former life was that of a hellish wasteland peasant, then the E-USA is great. If you're from one of the myriad groups that found a new way of life in the post-apocalyptic world though, the E-USA means annihilation and subjugation. And that's not cunting just how unethical they are where no is watching. The Brotherhood Sentinels musing about brainwashing is heavily misaimed but not entirely erroneous.
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
I was referring to South America or non-E-USA territories
I mean I think there would probably be other people going on about how EVIL stuff like Free Markets are and say that's what lead to the Great War and proceeding to go on about "establishing order" and going on about "killing those bourgeoise monsters" in towns that are starting to be rebuilt, as in murder as many merchants as possible and maybe even raid surrounding farmers and the like. And also go on about how alongside this technology, the fact so many Americans had guns and those guns were used in Post-Apocalypse meant they were all evil.
Think of the Communists from Metro 2033/2034/2035 as an example of a Communist-Government in a Post-Apocalyptic setting, complete with how they take over settlements
Kinda like the talks in that Fallout Nuclear Metal fic, the author with other guys were saying how Capitalism was the cause of the Great War, never mind what the Chinese did
And yeah, they probably were gonna just say that the USA should have traded or gave away their oil and whatever energy-tech they had to China and stopped being so "paranoid" and "selfish"
Actually, why doesn't the NCR seem to have Communists/Socialists around? I mean I think lots of people hate the Brahmin Barons, a bunch of New Bolsheviks around would be an offer for a "better world"
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Floridaman
Well-known member
That and bribes tend to work well at luring the youth away, after all what is better traditions, or luxury from a time your tribe regarded as mythical.
Floridaman
Well-known member
we already know there are communists elsehwere, but American fusion is pretty much the only source of energy for large civilization left, so the US will just ignore them and leave the ones not in the America’s in the dark. The ones in the Americas will be purged, as for communists in the NCR, there is no one to say what communism is. Remember the US wouldn’t preserve any commie material so the most you would get is something like in Paranoia, so you get people following John Lennon and Groucho Marx.
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
People just need a sort of vague idea about a centralized command economy and killing off rich people en masse to start
That said, I guess you need to find old buried and extremely secret books from pre-war to get the full idea
Please tell me the CIA was at least smart enough to 'edit' the Communist Manifesto of any mentions of 'global revolution' so once the commies take over Mexico they will at least stay out of everyone else's affairs.
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
It’s slightly minor, but I can see em “being forced to” go off and “liberate” others if only to go on about how those others are making their communist state VERY hard to fully achieve and see if they can take their resources and “redistribute” them
It may just take longer
Besides, not as if they follow him word for word, I recall there being stuff about the Right to Bear ARMS in the Communist Manifesto last I read it
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Navarro
Well-known member
I mean, so are the NCR - and pretty much every state that becomes successful enough.
Duke Nukem
Hail to the king baby
I still think the Enclave US is the best option for the restoration of America despite their ways of doing things
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
People dislike remembering that aside from wypipo, other nations did “imperialism” when they conquered foreign territory
Biggest issue I think in-relation to “imperialism” is whether or not those conquered are TRULY part of the conquering nation or not, or if they even have any say in that nation and its own areas’ affairs