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."