Moira Brown led Scribe Rothchild into the engine room and waited for his reaction. The balding man's jaw dropped when he entered and saw the the size of the room and, of course, the bulging cylinder in the middle and housed the core itself, which spun slowly.

Moira watched his reaction as he walked down he catwalk toward it. The alien vessel around him made its usual noises, and of course there was the ever-present low thrum that pervaded the entire ship.

Rothchild stepped up to the core and placed one hand on it, then immediately rescinded it. "It's warm! There's no radiation leakage, is there?"
Moira grinned. "Oh, no, no no. No radiation here. That would be bad. No, I think it's not actual glass. Some kind of transparent metal that's always warm. At least, I think that's what it is. It's like that elsewhere in the ship too, though, so it's probably fine."
The pair of Brotherhood Knights behind Rothchild and the other two scribes with him looked at each other briefly. Moira guessed they were concerned, but in the power armor it was hard to tell.

At least it was a distraction for them. They'd been jumpy about Fawkes ever since they'd come on board. It made sense. Their head of security was a Super Mutant, after all, albeit an incredibly well-spoken one. That was probably the only thing that had kept him alive since his liberation from Vault 89. It had definitely helped when the scribes and their protectors had teleported aboard. Sometimes those that had worked with him for a while forgot what he was, and that had almost led to disaster.

But it had been fine in the end, and his nature was quickly forgotten when they were being shown around. Fawkes was keeping a discreet distance from them, still keeping an eye but not intruding. Meanwhile, Moira was very much enjoying knowing things Rothchild didn't, given his often smug and superior attitude.

He asked the obvious question. "How does it work?"
Moira replied enthusiastically, "Well, we think it extracts inter-dimensional energy from the same realm the ship travels in when it goes faster than light. What we've translated is fascinating, but Sally's the only one that can make any sense of the alien language and she's only been able to figure out a little bit.
Rothchild rubbed his chin. "Hmm. We might be able to help with that."

There was a "What the hell?" behind them, and they turned around to see a Knight aiming at an alien worker that had approached them. The little guy stopped in his tracks, his black eyes wide. Moira hurredly interposed herself between them. "Oh, please don't! They're just the little alien guys, they never hurt anyone."
The Knight kept his weapon at the ready. "I thought those things were hostile."
Moira launched into exposition mode. "Well, actually the aliens have two separate classes. The ones that wear white are capable of making higher-level decisions and the ones that wear red just fix the ship. They don't seem to see the difference between us and the white ones. They've never interacted with anyone the entire time we've been here, except for running away. A lot. They're timid little things, really."
The Knight lowered his laser rifle but, as before, didn't holster it.

Rothchild said to her, clearly eager to continue, "Now that that's sorted, what's next?"
Moira grinned. "Ooh, well, this room leads onto multiple areas. We have the robot assembly area, the cargo bay, the hangar, and the cryo bay. Which would you like to see first?"

People of the Wasteland. This message is directed at those that seek more than mere survival. Those with skills and the desire to use them to protect others. Those that will fight to defend not just their family and friends, but all of humanity. If you are one of these, seek the beacon of The Defenders. If you can get to us, you can join us, and help us to protect this world from threats you cannot even imagine.

[Radio broadcast named "The Defenders' Invitation"]

Directives of The Defenders

Our technology shall never be used for material gain unless necessary for the protection of Planet Earth.

Our technology shall never be distributed unless necessary for the protection of Planet Earth.

Knowledge of the existence of aliens shall only be shared when absolutely necessary.

Interference in Wasteland affairs is prohibited unless absolutely necessary.

Do not kill unless forced to.

Do not steal.

Those that do not adhere to these directives will be cast out.

The bridge of the alien vessel was never silent, even less than it was on the rest of the ship. As Sarah Fitzpatrick sat in the captain's chair on the night shift, she sometimes felt that she'd go insane. The beeping and whirring, the sound anyone made when they pressed a button, it was a source of constant aggrivation for it. She hoped she'd get used to it and tune it out. She'd only been there a few hours, so she fervently hoped she'd stop noticing. She'd loved the idea of being in the coveted captain's chair, but it was actually driving her crazy.

She didn't even have much to do there. Her job was really just to keep a general track of what the departments were doing. She almost wished there was an alien attack so she'd be able to look forward and see something more than a motionless Earth and slowly moving stars.

There was the sound of the teleporter behind her, coming from the captain's cabin. Probably just a team coming back. She didn't bother to look round when the door opened and just kept her focus on what she was doing- reading a report on new arrivals in Vault 101, where the Defenders had taken up residence and did the bulk of their research into the ship.

She had almost finished when a sound behind her made her frown. The footsteps sounded small, like a child's. That would be a first, at least, since Captain Sally had grown up.

Sarah decided it was worth looking round. When she did, the last thing she saw was a blue light. Then she died.

Fawkes was very glad when the tour of the Brotherhood scribes was over. The Knights made him uneasy. He understood their instinctive desire to kill him, of course, but that didn't help his anxiety. He found it a little rude, actually, that they never acknowledged that he was different from other Meta humans, but there was nothing he could do but keep his distance where possible.

Moira was having a last conversation with Rothchild when the intercom on the wall behind Fawkes glowed. He pressed the button and the sound that emanated sounded like a firefight with alien weapons. A voice shouted into the other end, "Aliens on the bridge! Send backup now! We're trying to hold them off, but we need help!"

Fawkes didn't hesitate. He hurried down to Moira, as the Knights made it clear they were tracking his approach. He said to Moira and Rothchild, "We have aliens on the bridge. I request the assistance of your Knights."
Rothchild replied, "Yes, of course, please. You two, do as he asks."
The Knights followed, and Fawkes quickly led them to the teleporter on the lower level. As soon as he stepped in he saw Defenders in Power Armor, their energy shields flickering as they took hits from alien weapons.
Fawkes immediately readied his Gatling Laser and headed into the bridge to start taking down aliens. He got three before they forced him back by focussing their fire on him rather than the others. But the brief lull caused by their focus gave the others a chance, and they started pushing forward, including the Knights. Soon the other aliens were down, so Fawkes pushed the intercom for the Engine Core and when Moira answered, he said, "All intruders have been, uh, neutralised. I'm going to take the teleporter down and see if there are any on the surface."
Moira told him to be careful and Fawkes went off.
As he expected, the surface was clear. The guards on the beacon were dead, of course, but there were no more aliens. It made sense that they would bring everyone they could onboard. But it was disturbing, to say the least, that they'd made it on board in the first place.

Fawkes replaced the guard and then activated the beacon. When he rematerialized, he informed Moira and then went to gathering the personnel onboard. As second-in-command after Sally, he had to get everyone back aboard.

The conference room chairs, like the chairs on the bridge, were different to the ones built by the aliens. They'd brought desk chairs aboard to be a bit more comfortable than those meant for the aliens' strange frames. But right now, Sally was anything but comfortable as she started the meeting. Sitting around the round table were her, as captain, Moira as head of their scientific division, Elliot Tercorien as head of medical, Fawkes as head of security and Amata Almodovar, the Overseer of Vault 101.

They all wore worried expressions, and Sally started by saying, "I know we're all shaken up by this incursion, and of course, by the losses we've sustained. But to prevent more we need a way to find out what's happened and we need to secure ourselves. Fawkes, I know you've been saying for a while we should move the beacon to Vault 101. You were right, and I didn't listen. I'm sorry, this was my fault."

Fawkes shook his head. "Well, uh, no. There's never been any organised resistance to us. It made sense to make it difficult for people to track us by putting it out there. And, uh, nobody ever expected an attack from the aliens to come from the ground."

Sally gave him an appreciative smile, then asked Amata, "Are you-" she didn't even get to finish the question before Amata replied, "Yes. It'll be safe with me."
Sally nodded in thanks and then Fawkes said, "I'll do it myself."
"Good. Our next task is to figure out where the little pricks came from. I doubt this is the last of them. But I don't know how they could be there. There have been no readings of ships, I checked myself as soon as I got back."She took a deep breath. This was intense. At fifteen years old, once upon a time she'd be in school and now all these people's lives were depending on her, in a way they hadn't since she'd taken over as Captain. Calm and collected, like Captain Cosmos.
"So this is our highest priority now, we need to find out what happened. Fawkes," she directed her next question to him as he was her second. He was her moon monkey. "You'll take charge of efforts on the ground. We need to be talking to people across the wasteland. Rumors of aliens, or even alien technology. Any hint as to where they might be. Ask Elder Lyons if his people have anything and impress the importance of it on him. This is a threat to everyone, not just us, so now's not the time for secrets if he has any."
Fawkes nodded his understanding.
"I'll have a look up here. In, say, three days, we'll meet back in this room and decide next steps. Anybody have any questions or insights?"
Nobody said anything. They were probably too taken aback by the whole thing. Sally couldn't afford to be, so she said, "Alright, let's get to it."

As she took her place at a console in the bridge, she saw that the Captain's chair was still stained with the blood of the night watchman. What was her name? Something Fitzpatrick? God, what was it?
It took a few moments to recall. Sarah. That had been her name. Like Elder Lyons' daughter.

For a while she didn't even start up the console. She knew that this was going to be the ultimate test of her abilities. There had never really been a crisis before. But she'd beat this. She'd defend her planet, or there would have been no point in any of this.

But she really, really wished she had her old Captain back.

Several hours later, Sally sat back and rubbed her eyes. She'd been focussing for too long. The sensor logs showed nothing of interest going back to the fight with the other ship. There weren't even any readings of teleporters beyond their own, and some oddities in the Commonwealth that didn't match alien techology.

Sally got up and went into her cabin. She grabbed a coffee from the dispenser and sat at her desk to enjoy it. There just didn't seem to be any way they could have shown up. It was like they'd been here before the fight with the other ship. That was when they'd started monitoring the sensors. But the aliens would have had no reason to leave before the fight.

She wondered briefly if they might not have seen it for some reason. Something blocking the sensors, or.. damn it! Sally sat bolt upright. The power cut out during the fight! There was a period of about two minutes when the sensors wouldn't have recorded anything, because they were offline!

But that didn't help. How could they see what they couldn't see? Sally sat back to think. After a while, she finished her coffee and headed to the teleporter to the power core. On her way out, she said to the crewman to hold down the fort.

A few minutes later, she came across Moira in the weapons testing area. When she managed to grab her attention, she said to her, "Hey Moira. I've got a question for you. The old Captain mentioned once that the Enclave used a weapons satellite to destroy some robot or something. That has to be nearby, right? Could we access its camera logs?"

Moira took a moment to think it over. "Well, sure, if we could... but no, it would be too secure. I mean that would be top-of-the-line security. We couldn't hack it. Not remotely, anyway."

Sally grinned. "If only we had some kind of spaceship or something. Dang."
"I'll let Cranfield know. He'll be ecstatic," Moira replied.
Sally asked, "Is he that ex-Enclave pilot? Is he able to pilot the fighters?"
Moira shrugged. "I guess we'll find out. I know he's been totally obsessed with them. He keeps saying the best way to learn the controls is to try."
"He'll get the chance now," Sally remarked. "I almost envy him. I'll have a look in the cargo bay for Hartigan's old suit."

Sally was last in the conference room, having been making sure Hartigan's spacesuit was once again safely stowed. If she wanted she could ask for more to be dispensed, but they never really needed the suit. Any repairs to the ship from the outside could be done by drones. That use was a one-off that was unlikely to be needed again, but still, it was worse preserving the suit in case it was needed again.

She sat down with the others and kicked off the meeting. "Sorry to keep you waiting. We have a lead. It turns out that when the power went out on our ship during the battle with the other mothership, they took the opportunity to send down escape pods. I guess they realised they were doomed and evacuated while we were blind and occupied with trying to fix it. Anyway, we have a location on where they went. There's an area a ways north of Vault 101 where they landed. But that was five years ago, so they could be anywhere by now."

Fawkes added, "I can help with that. The Brotherhood have never encountered the aliens, but they also don't go that far north. However some of our people did hear from travelling traders that they've seen them on occasion. Apparently they track everyone coming close to the General Atomics factory outside Frederick. It sounds like that might be near your landing zone."

Sally frowned. "It's near, but it'd still take a few hours to get there. There are plenty of closer places. If they were going to go there, why wouldn't they just land there?"
They all had a think on that for a moment. Then Moira asked, "Isn't Fort Detrick near there? Is that closer to the landing zone"
Sally replied, "Yeah, actually, it's pretty close. You think it might be involved?"
Moira shrugged and said, "Well, yeah. General Atomics would make sense if they were planning on building something. But Fort Detrick's a lot more defensible. If it were me, I'd use Detrick as a base."
Amata had been silent up until that point, but now she stated, "It would be a bad idea to just go in unless we knew what they're up to. Clearly they felt confident enough in whatever they're doing that they thought they could get away with an attack."
Sally considered for a moment, then asked Moira, "Can you go with a team and see what's missing from General Atomics? Maybe if you know what the components are, you can figure out what they're building."

It was some hours later when Zhou Chen found himself bored out of his skull. The Chinese ghoul had joined up survived two hundred years and a nuclear war and had jumped at the chance to actually do something with his life. But now he was doing the exact same stuff he had hated back then. At least back in Underworld he'd been free, and hadn't been subjected to people ordering him around.

Still, at least his tech was better. The T-60 power armor he wore was the envy of his people back during the war, and the improvements made to it to incorporate alien energy shielding made it damn near invincible. Their small arms would have made a Chimera tank think twice.

The little green men in the place had attempted to put a fight but it had been laughably pathetic. It was weird, actually. Chen had seen comics in his youth that looked remarkably like them- of course, the comics were prohibited, but children do as they will- and they'd been called Zetans. Chen wondered sometimes whether they had been inspired by the real thing, which they knew now had been abducting people for millenia.

It didn't matter, but it kept his mind busy as he watched the Defenders' chief scientist fuss about the remains of old cars and robots which looked like they'd been gutted. He'd also seen her fuss about some storage room earlier. That probably meant the little sǐ guǐ had been stealing parts. He didn't know what for, but that was for her to figure out. He just needed to keep her safe.

As much as he hated being a guard, he had to admit that it was still probably the best job he'd ever had.

Fawkes sat silently in a vertibird as the scenery rushed past. Fort Detrick wasn't far, so it didn't take long to get there by air. The ex-Enclave aircraft was filled with Defenders in power armor, and the other that flew alongside were the same. This was the kind of thing Fawkes loved. Not flying into battle; he was a meta human but he didn't relish killing. It was these kinds of moments he loved. These people, like him, were dedicated to something important. They, like him, were willing to die to protect those below. To stop the aliens from interfering in human affairs, and... worse.

He took the moment to enjoy it. Then the moment was over as the vertibird's horizontal momentum ceased and they landed with a jolt. Fawkes came out and scanned the area, as did the others. Nothing. He instructed the pilots to keep watch outside and come in after them if they spotted anything.

Moira Brown joined him at the rusted but secure door to the underground portion of the base. The old army base was partially above ground, but had also been built considerably below ground as well. That would be where the aliens were.

It didn't take long to hit the first pockets of resistance. They seemed to have caught the aliens off-guard, because the first one that saw him was unarmed and looked shocked at the appearance of Fawkes and his companions in power armor. The enormous green man was on it before it could make a sound or move, and in one punch the fragile little creature was dead.

They continued on, making some effort to keep quiet to try to preserve the element of surprise as they moved through the pre-war facility. It didn't take long for that to disappear, though, as they attempted to clear a room and one managed to flee before they could get to it. One of the Defenders dashed after, but it managed to get an alien device on a table and press a button before a chunk of its chest was dissolved with a disintegrator.

After that, the aliens put up somewhat more of a fight, but not enough. Even the ones with shields went down quickly under the onslaught of the intruders' weaponry, and when they got to the bottom level, as indicated on wall maps, they hadn't lost a single soldier.

Meanwhile, Moira continued close behind, guarded by a single soldier. She stayed well out of the fight, but needn't have, as she had a shield of her own.

It wasn't until the very last room that the Defenders encountered enough resistance to make them hesitate. This time the aliens seemed to have found some inner fury or desperation that made them fight even harder. Disintegrator and atomizer bolts flew through the air. They'd only managed to kill four aliens before one of their soldiers in power armor took a hit that downed her shields and dissolved a portion of her armor. She fell back against the wall and hurriedly discarded the front plate of her armor as it dissolved, to try to stop the effect from spreading.

There were now only eight of them left, and a little over twenty aliens remained. The other Defenders kept themselves in cover- or at least as much as possible before it started dissolving from the incoming fire.

The effects of the alien weaponry wasn't as damaging to Fawkes as it was to the humans, but he was nevertheless cautious, and attempted to survey the flow of battle to see what advantage he could gain. As he looked, he saw that there was one alien at the back who seemed to be directing the others. It looked much the same, but they treated it with deference, so Fawkes assumed it had to be their leader.

Fawkes' Gatling Laser didn't have the range to get a reliable hit on it, so he got the attention of another Defender who was also taking cover. He pointed to the alien at the back and the other Defender nodded, popped up and took a shot with his Disintegrator. The shot was a good one- it struck the alien in its arm and kept going from there, cascading through it and turning it into a pile of ash as it screamed incoherently.

The other aliens seemed shocked at their leader's disintegration, and their fire lulled for a moment. Fawkes and the others took the opportunity to quickly dispatch the rest.

When they they were clear, Fawkes called for Moira to come in, then said to her, "I think we found what you were looking for."
He indicated a device in the room that was fairly large and seemed to be made of various components. Fawkes thought he could see the atomic reactors that had been taken from General Atomics.

Moira seemed to see it too, because she smiled when she came in. The smile soond faded, though, as she went to the terminal that had been hooked up to it. "Oh, no!" she cried as she saw what was on the screen.
Fawkes waited for her to explain as he kept an eye on the felled aliens and the entrance, in case there were more.
He didn't have to wait long. "This is awful! They've already sent a transmission!"
Fawkes' eyes widened as he turned to her and saw her expression. Had they failed? Were more on the way?
Moira pressed a couple of buttons on the keyboard and the blood drained from her face. She looked up at Fawkes and whispered, "They're here. This transceiver has been active for years. They were ordered to take our ship out from the ground so that they wouldn't have to fight us. But they'll be here in minutes."

Fawkes thought hard. What could they do now? They had the transceive, so could they tell them to go? He suspected that wouldn't work.
He asked Moira, "Did they tell them that they'd failed to take us out?"
Moira scanned the transmission logs and shook her head. "They were still waiting for word to come back."
Fawkes gave a shrug. "So tell them they were successful. That our ship is under their control."
Moira frowned, but did it anyway, mimicking the conversational style they'd used previously.
The human filfth has been cleansed from our vessel.
A few moments later the aliens responded with, We will be there soon. Then we will finish the job we started and wipe them from the face of the planet once and for all. You will be rewarded with a place in the Fleet Of Cold Fury, as promised.

As Moira read out their response, one of the Defenders in power armor, who sounded like he was a ghoul, asked, "Finish the job they started? What does that mean?"
Fawkes replied, "It doesn't matter. We need to contact our ship. Can you do that from here?"
Moira didn't reply, only focussing on the terminal. After a few moments, she said, "Yes! I've got a connection. I'll tell them what we found."
Fawkes nodded approvingly, and kept watching the area.

Captain Sally was pondering the situation from the communication station on the bridge when Frank Sargent, who was at sensors, yelped in surprise. He'd been expecting it since Sally had put them on alert a couple of minutes previous, but still, to see something on the sensors, for the first time in five years, was a shock to her. She supposed he'd never seen anything on there at all.

Sally hurried over to have a look, then rushed back to the Captain's chair just in time to see an alien vessel descend into view in front of them. De ja vu or what?

This time, though, the other ship's shields were down and its weapons were unpowered, as theirs were. Sally had decided it was best to maintain the ruse as long as possible. She knew from tests years ago that she could get a shot off from the Death Ray within five seconds, while it took a little over twenty seconds to get the shields up. And she also knew that in their culture, approaching with weapons armed and shields up was a bad idea.

So, the question became, could they destroy the enemy ship in one shot while their shields were down? True, the other ship they'd destroyed had been destroyed immediately after their shields went, but then they probably took damage before then, as they had themselves.

Sally wasn't sure if this would work. If not, there was every possibility that the aliens might themselves get even luckier and end them before they could get a second shot off.

It took only a few seconds for an outline of an alien face to appear, projected via hologram, in front of the raised platform of the bridge.
It spoke. "Da darum mai heerenya. Ha reemba horo."
Sally recognised it as the ritual greeting of the aliens. She hadn't yet accepted the transmission, so it couldn't see her or anyone else. And it wouldn't. They had only one chance, and she was going to take it. She took a deep breath and said, "Arm the Death Ray and raise shields."
She got a little tingling sensation as she said that. But now she had to wait, her hand poised on the control to fire the Death Ray.

Five seconds after giving the command, It lit up and she slammed her hand down. The whole ship shook as energy jutted out from it and towards the enemy vessel. The energy immediately dissolved the enemy ship where it struck, and spread quickly. Within a couple of seconds, there was a massive explosion in the enemy vessel and it disappeared in a cloud of debris.

Sally exhaled, having unknowingly been holding her breath, as she heard whoops and cheers behind her. But she didn't turn around, choosing instead to keep a hand by the controls. When the celebration died down, and she was sastified that nothing was left, she said to the others, "Stand down weapons and shields. Scan for lifepods." She wasn't going to make that mistake again, even if there didn't seem much chance.

A few moment later she got the report from Sargent that there was nothing in the vicinity, and she sat back in her chair and smiled. The Earth was safe another day.

But she had no idea when the next attack might come, and whom else the aliens had alerted to the situation on Earth. There was still work to be done.