"Halt!"
The boy did the only sane thing to do when confronted with a heavily armed man in powered armour: he obeyed. Warily, he put his hands in the air, careful to show that they held simple tools as opposed to weapons. The figure which had called out stepped closer, the unmistakable whine of servo motors confirming the boy's earlier hypothesis although this armour was both darker and more angular than the T-45b suits worn by the Brotherhood. The man's voice came out tinny through the speakers.
"Are you on Project Purity?"
The boy nodded slowly, trying to keep the panic out of his voice.
"Y-Yes..."
The man was silent for a moment. The boy felt the already stained jumpsuit he wore become damp with sweat. He wished dearly that he had his gun but he had left the battered rifle with most of his other things in a cabinet in the upper rooms, even if he knew it wouldn't have made a difference. He had seen what power armour could withstand, watched Brotherhood Paladins wade through fusillades of gunfire as if the bullets were just a warm spring rain. If this man decided to shoot, he would be an oozing puddle of gloop in seconds. The man in powered armour played with something on the side of his helmet and the boy realised the man must be conferring with someone over the helmet's radio. After another long moment, the man spoke again through the helmet's speakers.
"The Colonel wants to speak with you."
The boy exhaled slightly and followed the man up the stairs towards the control room. Colonel? So whoever these people were, they used old military ranks, unlike the weird pseudo-feudal system that the Brotherhood used. Combined with the fact they had functional power armour...
"Excuse me?"
The power armoured man turned, his black almost insect like visage supremely menacing in the poor light. The boy made a tiny squeak of fright but set his jaw. If he could kill a Centaur without throwing up, he could ask one bloody question.
"Who are you people?"
To his surprise, the man laughed. The noise was distorted by the speakers but it was neither bitter and jaded, nor psychotic and cruel. In a way, it was one of the first genuine pieces of laughter the boy had heard since coming out of the Vault. Yet at the same time, he did not feel comforted at all.
"Who are we? We're the Enclave."
The Enclave? As in from the radio...? The boy had listened to their broadcast, indeed, ever since Three Dog had started calling him 'the Wasteland Messiah', it had been his main source of entertainment. He thought back to his old history classes under Mr Brotch, of the old American government. Were they anything like that? Did they still have a Constitution and a Congress and a Statue of Liberty? He had seen the old Capitol building through a pair of binoculars and it looked like an awful wreck...
"Jennings?"
Another armoured figure was walking towards them. This one was cradling a strange looking rifle in his arms. From the flickers of green lightning within the gun's barrel, the boy surmised it to be some sort of plasma weapon. Wait... Plasma weapons? Even the Brotherhood... The boy was suddenly very glad he had surrendered as quickly and as painlessly as possible.
"Yes, sir?"
"Who is that?"
"One of the Project Purity people. The Colonel wants him in the control room."
"But have you found any others?"
The man (Jennings?) escorting the boy shook his helmeted head and the other man made a concerned noise.
"There should be a lot more of them but all we've found are Wilson, Kaplinski and that Holt woman."
Wilson? The boy's eyes widened. But before he could ask further questions, his escort pulled open the door to the control room and gestured towards it with a jerk of his head.
Another half dozen armoured men stood around within the rotunda, directed by a man with a tan uniform and black cap. Jennings led the boy straight past them into the main control room. Another two men in power armour stood here, flanking a grey haired man in an overcoat of the same tan material. The grey haired man was talking to someone by the main control panel and as the boy walked into the main room, he saw that the someone was his father. The scientist's eyes widened as he saw him and the overcoated gentleman followed their gaze to the new arrivals. His thin mouth split into a smile and he spoke up in a distinctive accent that the boy could not place.
"Ah and this is the good doctor's son. Toby, right?"
The boy nodded slowly. They were about to say something further when a deep echoing boom reverberated through the building. In the distance there was the high pitched squeal of a Gatling laser followed by more explosions. The man in the overcoat reached up and touched his headset.
"What is going on?"
"..."
"Through the sewers? Well? Did you get them?"
"..."
"What! So now the Brotherhood knows?"
"..."
"How long have we got?"
"..."
"Goddamnit! Okay... We've still got another two companies in reserve. With Vertibird support, they should be enough to hold the place until we can bring in some heavier stuff from Adams... Evacuation? Of what exactly?"
"..."
The grey haired man looked up at Toby and his father, linking eyes with Toby for a moment before the boy looked awkwardly away. A faint smile returned on the man's face.
"Yeah. We'll get them to Raven Rock. Have a transport prepped for them."
He removed a finger from his headset and began barking orders to the two power armoured troopers next to him. They saluted in unison and motioned for Toby and his father to follow them. The boy did so as meekly as possible. If they could hold off a Brotherhood assault this close to the Citadel, these people meant business. His father looked at them with disdain in his eyes but complied as well. The father and son met each other's eyes and James offered his son a reassuring smile that did nothing to relieve the fear building in the boy's stomach. They were in the middle of a battle between two of what must be the two most terrifying human factions of the Wasteland. How could he not be slightly scared?
-0-
Toby did not consider himself the impatient type. He had once hidden in a locker for the better part of three hours while hiding from a Super Mutant patrol. But that time, it had been a paralysis of fear rather than this deep uneasiness in his gut. He was pacing up and down the Spartan metal room that he had been left in ever since arriving in "Raven Rock". His father was in a nearby room but they hadn't had a chance to talk other than James' hissed warning: "Don't tell them anything!".
Toby bit his lip. He had no idea how the battle over the Jefferson Memorial had gone but it must have been over by now, right? He had been in this room for at least twelve hours although he did not have much to go by other than the occasional visit by a radiation suit-wearing doctor who had given him a brief check up and a bowl of surprisingly palatable mush. They had also taken his pipboy away upon arriving and replaced his stained 101 jumpsuit with a clean albeit slightly baggy set of pre-war clothes.
He was wondering about the battle at the Memorial. Why did the Brotherhood care so much about the Purifier? They had been perfectly fine when the place was infested with supermutants but as soon as someone else showed up, they had attacked. Not exactly the smartest move, Toby mused, remembering the menacing glow of the Enclave plasma rifles and the terrible power of their Vertibirds. But then again, Toby smirked, the Brotherhood were hardly the sharpest tools in the shed. History had been Toby's favourite lesson back in the Vault and he had impatiently devoured every book on the subject he could find and even a few badly damaged ones he found in the Wasteland. The Brotherhood was what the books called "dogmatic". They had started following rules for rules sake as opposed to genuinely caring about why the rules were instituted in the first place. They hoarded children's books for god's sake! If he had not been trying to charm the woman into giving him an almost pristine copy of "The Campaigns of Napoleon", he would have pointed that out to Scribe Yearling long ago.
The Brotherhood were stuck in an endless cycle. War is all they knew and eventually, that would prevent them from rebuilding the world properly. They scorned all non-military avenues of research and clung to their slowly decaying pieces of pre-war technology as if simply wearing power armour was all that was required for the world to go back to normal, as if it would cause raiders to start dressing in the Church Best and feral ghouls to rebuild the metro system. It was a stupid. But the Enclave, they had all the tech of the Brotherhood and maybe even more. And they seemed to have a pretty active interest in the Purifier...
Toby was so engrossed in his ponderings that he did not notice the door open with a metallic hiss. He turned and his eyes opened in shock. It was the grey haired man from the purifier and what he assumed to be a high ranking officer. The man offered a thin smile and his hand.
"Good evening, Mr Wilson."
Toby shook the offered hand. It had been a long time since anyone called him that. To most, he was the Lone Wanderer (a fairly stupid moniker in his opinion but he was not going to venture all the way to GNR just to tell Three Dog what he thought about it) or Toby to the small collection of people he knew well. The only people to call him Mr Wilson were the adults in the Vault, a fact which brought back some of the gnawing homesickness that he had been trying to suppress. This Enclave facility seemed uncannily similar in a great deal of ways, something which only exacerbated the feeling.
"Thank you..."
"Colonel Autumn."
"Colonel Autumn, sir."
The grey haired man cracked another thin smile, this one slightly more genuine than the first. He gestured that they should sit down and Toby fell back onto the thin bed (Oh, the forgotten wonders of a clean mattress!). The Colonel sat himself on the chair of the small desk in the corner and swivelled around to face Toby.
"You're a civilian, son. No need for those military formalities."
His friendliness was quite artificial but that was at least better than the outright hostility that most people outside the Vault seemed to engage in. Toby returned the man's smile. Only now, his father's warnings played inside his head.
"Don't tell them anything!"
But why? What made these people so intrinsically worse than everyone else? The Colonel leaned back slightly and folded his arms, gazing at Toby with those peculiar dark green eyes of his and the boy looked away again. The Colonel produced a faint chuckle.
"I don't bite, son."
Toby nodded jerkily, not wanting to point out that Autumn had hundreds of power armoured minions at his disposal, each of them armed with weapons capable of doing things which would make a mere bite seem quite insubstantial. Swallowing his nervousness, or at least as much as he could, Toby spoke up.
"W-What do you want?"
The Colonel looked at him, his eyes less piercing now. Almost friendly.
"Well, I thought that you had to have some questions. It's not every day that three companies of power armoured infantry are airlifted on top of your place of work..."
Toby offered an awkward laugh which Autumn echoed. Toby felt a surge of questions struggling beneath the restraining bolt of his father's warning. But surely if he was the one asking the questions...
"What is the Enclave?"
Autumn uncrossed his arms and leant forward slightly, straightening his back with unconscious military precision.
"The Enclave is the remains of the United States Government. Before the war, large numbers of US Armed Forces Personnel, members of government and their families were sealed in shelters not unlike your very own Vault. It was our mission to rebuild America after the radiation cleared. Unfortunately... there were complications. The supermutants were one, the Brotherhood were another. We came close to solving the mutant issue around thirty five years ago but the Brotherhood attacked us and... We lost. Maybe five percent of our civilian population and nine percent of our armed forces were killed when they attacked the Poseidon Oilrig. It was a disaster."
There was something about the Colonel's posture as he mentioned the Oilrig. Toby did a quick bit of mental arithmetic and surmised that the Colonel must have been around ten at the time. Old enough to remember someone who hadn't made it?
"We relocated most of the old West Coast personnel to Raven Rock and Adams AFB immediately afterwards. We've been building strength ever since, getting some of the old replicator machinery and hydroponics facilities working again."
"And Project Purity?"
Autumn's eyes shone with sudden fervour.
"It is the first stage of the Reclamation. Your parents were absolutely correct about the effects that such a technology could have on the population of the wastes. We can unify everyone. No more pathetic squabbling over resources or slavery. Once all the big groups have come together under the Enclave banner, we are a nation once more. After that, the reconstruction of factories and infrastructure is basic..."
Toby found himself nodding in agreement. But then he stopped himself.
"But why are you telling me this?"
Autumn raised an eyebrow and Toby was about to apologise for interrupting before Autumn gave another faint chuckle.
"Quite right. I was beginning to sound like our beloved President for a moment there."
He smiled and with every time, the expression became a little more genuine.
"The reason I am speaking to you, Mr Wilson... or would you rather, oh what was it... 'The Last, Best Hope for Humanity'?"
Toby looked down.
"So you have been listening to GNR?"
Autumn smirked.
"It's the next best thing after the Eyebots," his face turned slightly more serious, "but the rantings of that... man aside, I have come to the conclusion that you are a man of some integrity. You help people whenever you can and don't even demand a reward. Hell! When I was nineteen, all I did was chase girls and play football. But you, son, you've got a rare combination. You want to save the Wasteland and you have the potential too."
Toby's head was spinning. Living up to Three Dog's broadcasts had been a source of much depression on the boy's part. How was he supposed to be the 'Last, Best Hope for Humanity' if he was just one man and a fairly scrawny, nineteen year old one at that? But Autumn seemed to think that there was a way. Killing raiders was one thing but what about creating a world where raiders did not need to kill and steal? The Brotherhood had been hacking at the symptoms for centuries and gone nowhere.
Because they did not strike at the cause.
Toby found himself nodding. He could fight by himself for all of his life and accomplish next to nothing. But now? He was being given the chance to be more than one man. He could help an organisation of hundreds, an organisation with all the technology one could need to reclaim the Wasteland. Surely, that was 'Fighting the Good Fight'?
Autumn stood, about to leave Toby to his ponderings. He was almost at the door when he heard Toby stand. The Colonel looked at him and Toby saw his own resolute eyes reflected in the man's dark green irises.
"We need to find a GECK."
-0-
A/N
Toby is not stupid but he is kind of naïve. He has only been privy to a fairly rose-tinted version of the Enclave and his obsession with the past has left him with a pretty poor view of the present which makes the Enclave's promises even more alluring. Simply put, I am not making the Enclave out to be the good guys. They only seem that way from Toby's perspective.
Autumn thinks Toby is going to be useful because of the above as well as Toby's reputation in the wastes. That is why he comes across nicer. We will be seeing the nastier side of pretty much everyone in this story eventually, Brotherhood as well as Enclave. Still, if you think I am taking characters too far out, just say something. Toby is, of course, my own invention but don't be afraid to comment on him too. If he comes across sort of wimpy, you're right. But that knowledge of Napoleon and other generals is going to come in handy sooner or later... *manic laughter*