SITREP

H&K G39

It has been almost two weeks since Nick and I returned from the Glowing Sea with the H&K G36 blueprints and it will be another month before we see the first prototype, but the wait will be worth it. Lighter, easier to hold and fire that any other assault rifle we have, the G39 will also add the ability to utilize three different ammunition types found here in the commonwealth, one of those being the .38. While the rounds will be the same old sorry ass .38 rounds we have gobs of, the accuracy and rate of fire will partially compensate for that. The number of Tommy Guns and assault/combat rifles that we have managed to accumulate and disperse to settlements and provisioners has taken the majority of pipe pistols and rifles out of circulation. Hand someone a .45 Combat rifle in exchange for their pipe pistol, and they don't care that they are getting 300 rounds of .45 for almost a thousand rounds of .38.

This has created a massive surplus of the .38. At last count a week ago, Ronnie reported to me that we were nearing 100k rounds of the .38. The craziest swap day was with Wiseman and the Slog. We traded 10 combat rifles and 3 assault rifles for about 20 pipe pistols and close to 20k rounds of the .38. When I asked about the massive quantity of ammunition, Wiseman reminded me that ghouls can scavenge in area that humans can't. Ferals and radiation are pretty much non-factors, so they have greater access to more areas of the Commonwealth.

Ghouls

Super-spies and Super-scavengers... We need more ghouls in the field. I need to talk to Wiseman and Deegan about this. Those two are kind of the de-facto leaders of our ghoul population and I need to see how they would feel about sending a few more of their people out on the scavenging rounds. I would need to include humans in the groups because one or two ghouls by themselves could easily be mistaken for ferals and get taken out before a word could be exchanged. That is one of the reasons that we have been assigning human guards to any provisioners that are sent out from the Slog. The use of bandanas and sunglasses has helped quite a bit as well.

We are still seeing pockets of discrimination towards our ghouls. We are slowly working them into more of our security and recon patrols in an effort to give a broader exposure to the general populace. It seems that seeing a ghoul in a Minuteman uniform helps some people "get it." It will be a gradual process, but I am confident that we can eventually eliminate the prejudices that exist. I know that working with Hancock, Deegan, and Wiseman has pretty much nipped any possible prejudices I had forming after leaving 111 in the bud.

K-L-E-O / BOS Hack Attempt

Apparently the BOS planted a mole in Goodneighbor on an intel gathering mission who, at some point, decided that it would be a good idea to try to hack into K-L-E-O. This was a decidedly poor idea. Apparently K-L-E-O has installed her own custom firewall to prevent just that kind of thing. The mole tried a remote access procedure which was specifically what K-L-E-O has anticipated. Her firewall was designed to emulate a series of successes to any potential hacker while, in reality, she was using a few other pieces of custom hardware to locate the hacker. She would run the faux success scenarios until she located the perp and then proceed to give them the surprise of a lifetime.

By the time the Goodneighbor watch had located the source of the screaming that was echoing through the alleys and streets, K-L-E-O had flayed the man from his neck to his waist. While definitely not a standard procedure the we would employ in our interrogations, she did manage to get him to reveal everything from his name to the combination to the lock on his locker on the Prydwyn. Most important, we have acquired a radio that has the BOS secure frequencies to monitor and a codex for the encoded messages the mole was using. We have started to send in bogus reports to the Prydwyn in an effort to spread a little disinformation. Once confident that there are no suspicions of the mole having been compromised, this system will be used to stage an ambush on BOS forces at the time and place of our choosing.

Personal note: Don't screw with K-L-E-O.

Commonwealth Express and Publick Occurences

As of today, the Commonwealth has the beginnings of a mail and package system in place. With the use of our regional shipping hubs as sorting centers, citizens of the Commonwealth are now able to send letters and packages to any settlement that is part of our network. In addition, Piper's paper is now being distributed to all corners of the Comonwealth. Piper included a call for contributors to give the paper a feel for the wider community. We managed to gather enough advertisers from Diamond City to allow for free distribution for a pretty extended period of time. With the idea of their goods and services being advertised in every corner of the Commonwealth, getting the ads sold was a piece of cake. I am including a copy of Piper's first Commonwealth-wide editorial as a separate entry. Every time a read it, my pride in her grows.