Chapter Four
Spartan Hudson, interior of fallout shelter Vault 98. 0830 Hours, May 06, 2553 (Military Calendar)
'I was in the Enclave,' Weston began. 'I don't know what you've heard of them, or if they were the same in your wasteland as they are in this one-'
'Remnants,' Hudson said. 'of the American government. They viewed themselves as superior to the people of the wastes, the only ones worthy enough to reclaim America, and tried to wipe out every living thing twice in a mass genocide.'
'Sounds about right,' Weston said. 'But, yeah, I was a member of them but don't think that's why I view the Brotherhood in such a dim light. I actually defected to serve under Elder Lyons just before the Battle of Adams Air Force Base because I didn't see eye to eye with the rest of the Enclave.'
She paused and searched for the right words, gazing into the middle distance as she wrapped her hands around a steaming mug of coffee. Around her were the UNSC personnel and the Vault representatives from last night, sitting in the same room as before on the same seats, the exception being Weston who was seated at the head of the table, devoid of her armour. Without it, she looked strange and a whole lot smaller than the T-51 let on.
'Well, I guess we did on some things,' Weston said. 'I believed in their cause of rebuilding America again, to make it a better place for everyone living there, but we disagreed on how to go about it. You were right about the attempted genocide, Spartan. They did try that, on the Oil Rig about forty years ago and in DC very recently, trying to wipe the slate clean so they could take over again.
'That didn't sit right with me.'
'Why not?'Hudson asked.
'Because I'm the outlier,' Weston said. 'The anomaly, the random piece of data that came from nowhere, and because I made it a point to read a copy of the Constitution during my down time so I knew just what it was I was fighting for. The whole thing, barring the amendments added to it by the Enclave after the bombs dropped, particularly the Fourteenth Amendment. At least, before that got repealed shortly after the Enclave returned to the mainland.
'It says anyone born within the US is a citizen and cannot be denied life, liberty or property by the government of the state they live in, which is exactly what the Enclave was doing by trying to kill everyone, which struck a chord within me. A nation is not a place, but a people, and this nation was founded on the belief that all are equal regardless of race.
'Who are the Enclave to say that a ghoul or a super mutant or even just your average waster isn't a citizen because they don't have the right genetic profile? If this is still the United States of America, then they're all citizens of the country and have just as much right to life as anyone else.'
Her knuckles shone white for the briefest of moments, gripping the mug tightly as she spoke on a subject she was passionate about, then relaxed and carried on.
'I stuck it out for as long as I could, trying to find sympathetic ears for my belief or trying to change the direction we were going in, but I was alone in my plight and soon enough, I got the feeling my superiors were making plans to silence me somehow and rid themselves of a nuisance but by then, we'd come into contact with the Brotherhood and I saw an organisation who shared my vision of helping people, not killing them.'
'But the Brotherhood doesn't like mutants either,' Jex said.
There was a moment's pause then Weston said, 'Yeah,' in a quiet voice.
'They weren't perfect,' she added. 'But show me an institution that is and I'll show you a work of fiction. I'll bet the UNSC has its bad points, right?'
'Right,' Jex said.
'Right,' Weston said. 'But they were still a damn sight better than the Enclave when it came to protecting people, even if that same level of kindness wasn't extended to ghouls, though I figured they were more open to change than my previous employer.'
A humourless grin tugged at her features at that.
'I told them all I could about the crawler, its layout and defences and postings, what little I knew anyway, then sat and waited in the small cell they'd placed me in once I told them who I was, wondering if the next face I saw would be preceded by a set of keys, or a gun, once they decided on what they were going to do to me.
'As you might have guessed, they decided to keep me around and induct me into their ranks as a lowly initiate, giving me a chance to prove my worth and gain their trust, and to help them decipher the secrets of Enclave technology that stumped their Scribes. It wasn't perfect, but it was a whole hell of a lot better than the Enclave. For a while, at least.'
Weston paused again, a forlorn look on her face as she cast her mind's eye back however many months and years it had been since her time in the Brotherhood of Steel's Capital Wasteland chapter, and to the turning point that had made her attitude towards the knightly organisation sour like it had against the Enclave.
'It started with the death of Elder Lyons,' she said. 'and Sarah not long after when she took up the mantle of Elder. Unlike her father, who died in his sleep a few months after the Enclave's defeat, she died in battle though reports are a little thin on the ground, and a little contradictory even from the people who were there.'
She shrugged and added, 'Some say it was a raider hyped up on Psycho, others than it was a super mutant with a super sledge, or just an unlucky frag grenade. Me? I believe Bryan that it was a sniper who took her out.'
'Who?' Hudson asked.
'Bryan,' Weston said. 'He's the guy who came from Vault 101? You know, the Lone Wanderer?'
'Oh. We knew him as Liam.'
'Is he still around?' Williams said. 'Or did he die later on at some point, too?'
'No, he's alive,' Weston said. 'As far as I know, anyway. He settled down in 101 once it opened back up, marrying the Overseer and having a kid together, but the last anyone saw of him was a few months ago, heading west in a suit of T-45. Nobody knows where, or why, and it's not like I've been into DC recently to ask anyone.'
'A new quest, perhaps,' Hudson said.
'Perhaps,' Weston agreed. 'But after Sarah died, we went through a number of Elders, each somehow worse than their predecessor, until Arthur Maxson finally stepped up to the role when he was sixteen, a little over four years ago. At first, things seemed great because he brought the Outcasts back into the fold, bolstering our numbers, but then it wasn't.
'We near enough did a complete reversal, prioritising technology over protecting people and calling it saving them from themselves. Sure, Maxson kept a few of Lyons' policies like recruiting outsiders and helping communities, but not as many as you'd think. Places had to provide some measure of payment for regular protection, like food or ammunition, and soon enough the Brotherhood were taking over the whole of DC and the surrounding region, which didn't go unnoticed by Three Dog, at least until he was taken off air...'
'Taken off how?' Williams asked.
'Nothing was ever proven,' Weston said. 'But rumour has it that some hardliners took exception to the way Three Dog was talking about the Brotherhood and decided to do something about it.'
Hudson blinked at that, liking what he was hearing less and less. First the denial of free protection to those who needed it, then asserting control of an entire region via subversive methods, and now denying the freedom of speech?
Provided the rumours are true, he reminded himself.
It was just Weston's side of the story and she hadn't been there. Maybe Three Dog had been killed by someone from his past, a wronged acquaintance maybe or some really crazy fan, but what about the part of making people pay for protection? Sure, payment for services rendered was understandable but denying it to people who couldn't afford it? The Brotherhood leadership had to be cold hearted bastards to allow that, and the soldiers who went out had to be even worse to tell some starving family that no, we won't save you from those ghouls because you can't afford it.
How many people, both young and old, had died as a result of their inaction? Worse, if the Brotherhood really did have majority control over the Capital Wasteland, could they pick and choose which towns got protection? It wouldn't be hard for them to silence a settlement that complained too much about their rulers. Just pull their protection and let the wastes reclaim the land. After two or three times of this, the rest would learn to shut their mouths and accept that the most complex thing they'd own would be a simple radio.
'Yeah,' Weston said as she looked at the Spartan, seeing something in his expression that told her what he was thinking. 'That was what I started thinking once I saw the way things were going.'
'Yeah,' Hudson said in agreement.
'They clamped down on mutants even more,' Weston went on. 'Underworld got hit pretty hard by their 'reclamations' of advanced technology, the few who tried to stop what was essentially an armed incursion getting blasted to pieces, and left undefended given the Brotherhood practically stole Cerberus. Talon Company had a field day with that one. Actually, it was one of their last hurrahs before the Paladins came crashing down on them. Then they started in on Rivet City...'
She went on, again stating it was something she had heard from a friend of a friend, that some of the higher ups in the Brotherhood, Maxson included, went to the beached aircraft carrier with slightly different intentions regarding any technology the ship held, namely its reactor that provided power to the citizens of the Capital Wasteland's biggest and most prosperous settlement. For what, she didn't know. It was a rumour that had emerged after her departure from the organisation and Weston had no definite way to confirm or deny the Brotherhood had stolen the reactor, or if it was even Rivet City they were stealing from.
More than one ship with a reactor had gotten beached along the Anacostia River, some of them aircraft carriers like Rivet City, so who was to say the Brotherhood hadn't sized upon the chance to strip these wrecks and avoid angering a powerful economic centre and scientific research facility?
Weston went quiet again and stared into the middle distance, her coffee cold and unforgotten in her hands, and everyone around her waited for her to continue.
'They were becoming a shadowy copy of the Enclave,' she finally said. 'Or an echo, not quite the same as but more or less recognisable as the original, asserting their control over everyone using technology and denying a person protection because they didn't have the right genetic profile. I'd seen it before, only this time there wasn't anyone to stop them because they'd killed everyone who might've posed a threat, so I knew things could only grow worse.'
'So you decided to fight against them,' Hudson said, guessing the rest.
Weston nodded. 'Just me at first, then I was joined by a few others who'd had enough. Regular wastelanders, ex-mercs put out of a job, even a few ghouls to rub salt in the Brotherhood's wounds, and a few Knights and Paladins who felt betrayed by Maxson's abandoning of Lyons' ideals and philosophy. We were a ragtag bunch, operating out of whatever hole we could find that was big enough to hold us all and provide some measure of protection.'
'Until we stumbled across them,' Greer said. 'One of our scouting parties found them, or more accurately was saved from a bunch of super mutants by them, and we offered everyone shelter as a means of saying thank you. Once we heard their story, we felt compelled to help in whatever way we could.'
'Really?'Jex said. 'And why would you do that?'
'These Vaults were a continuation of America,' Greer said. 'Our ancestors were American citizens, and so is every person born within these walls. When Sergeant Weston explained to me what two organisations with ties to the pre-war government, the American government, were doing, I knew I couldn't just stand by and do nothing. The entire Vault pledged their support to her cause.'
'Okay, then.'
'So what's the plan?' Hudson asked. 'Long term. Are you trying to bring the Brotherhood down, or are you just weakening them as much as possible so somebody else can assert their dominance?'
'A bit of both,' Weston said. 'There's too few of us, even with the Vault behind us, to really tackle the Brotherhood head on so we go at them sideways, guerrilla warfare as much as possible. If we can bring them down doing that, great. We'll step in and try to manage the mess we leave behind as much as possible, or admit our failings and try to mitigate the damage we caused. If we can't, then yeah, we'll try to weaken them enough so that someone else can step in and muscle them out.'
'And if they're just as bad, if not worse?'
'We start the process up all over again.'
Spartan Hudson, interior of fallout shelter Vault 98. 1017 Hours, May 06, 2553 (Military Calendar)
The UNSC troops retired to an empty common room once Weston finished her tale, the former Brotherhood/Enclave soldier excusing herself to carry out some maintenance on her suit of armour when an air of awkwardness descended upon the room, the Vault officials making similar excuses about overseeing their areas of responsibilities, leaving Hudson and the troops under him free to do as they pleased.
He was leaning against the grey concrete wall of the common room, everybody else sprawled on the sofas and chairs that filled it, as they mulled over what Weston had said about the Brotherhood of Steel.
On the one hand, it did paint them as a nasty group who justified their actions as being necessary to protect humanity from repeating the mistakes of the past and gave themselves plausible deniability when something bad happened to someone objecting to what they did and how, but on the other, it was just one person's word to go on, and further muddying the issue was the fact Weston had once considered the Brotherhood of Steel a hostile faction given her previous allegiance to the Enclave.
Lingering resentment couldn't be reliably ruled out, even on a subconscious level, biasing her view towards the group and their actions in a negative light. If the rumours she had told them were true, then the troops under Maxson were little more than glorified raiders with a good public image. If they weren't true, then Weston was lashing out against a group actively trying to make the world a better place.
But then there was a third point to consider. This world wasn't Hudson's own. It was just one of an infinite number of parallel dimensions he owed no loyalty to. He had come here for the express purpose of acquiring technology the UNSC didn't have, not get involved in the machinations of warring factions by picking sides. There were enough opportunities to do that back home, what with the resurgence of the Insurrection and the various Covenant splinter groups.
His mission was already complete, the samples of RadAway and Rad-X safely stowed in his rucksack, but they had no ride home, not presently, and the Spartan turned to Tracy.
'Chief, how soon can you get Alpha 86 airborne again?' he asked.
'Three months, maybe,' the crew chief said. 'I'll need to check the damage first, and see if Greer will let me use whatever machine shop Vault 98 has, and get the bird back here so I can actually fix her, but yeah, three months.
'Probably.'
'Probably?' Williams said. 'Not really feeling comforted by that.'
'She took a missile strike to the starboard engine,' Tracy said quietly. 'And lost her aft port manoeuvring nacelle, and who knows what else when she crashed. Without a bin of spare parts, I'm going to have to make brand new replacements for everything.'
The Marine held up her hands by way of apology and said, 'Fair enough, but I'm kinda hoping we can go home at some point.'
'You're not the only one.'
Hudson just nodded as he digested this new information, that the team could be stuck in the wastelands for just over three months at best, provided everything went their way which, so far, hadn't been the case, meaning they'd have to find something to do to keep themselves occupied during those three or more months. As much as soldiers and Marines bitched about spending too long on the front, when actually presented with an extended downtime they began getting restless, eager for the action that defined their lives as combatants and there were only so many make do activities they could do before even that grew boring.
Admittedly, this only applied to Jex, Williams and Hudson, given Tracy would be spending the next three months barely sleeping as he fought to return a wrecked Pelican to active duty, and the three engineers would find a way to make themselves useful by picking apart some of Vault 98's technology to learn how it ticked and, maybe, improve it with their knowledge, but the three of them who were trained to fight? Nothing to do but sit around in some Vault and wait, bored out of their minds.
They needed something to do, to remain occupied and feel useful, and only one thing sprang to mind given their situation.
Jex and Williams looked at the Spartan as Hudson looked at them, a decade of fighting alongside one another allowing them communicate a great deal of information with just a few expressions and having a good idea of what was going on in each other's head, and they both nodded.
Hudson nodded back and got up, leaving the room to go in search of Sergeant Weston.
Battered, bruised, and undermanned, the crew of Alpha 86 was going to help fight the Brotherhood of Steel.
