The Wasteland Journals Chapter 8 No Rest For the Wicked, a fallout fanfic

Chapter 8: No Rest for the Wicked

Two Months Later, Raven Rock Command Center

Over the past few months, this room had become quite familiar to the Lone Wanderer. It was the place where the meeting of the senior officers always took place. Like most of the Raven Rock base, it looked like someone had ripped a compartment from a warship and thrown it underground, adding a few fancy doohickeys here and there to try and cover up how Spartan it really was.

Around the table of plate steel, sitting in the few comfortable and plush leather chairs as old as the base itself, sat the senior staff of the Enclave.

Represented via wall mounted camera with an intercom attached to it was the head of the Enclave, President John Henry Eden. Ever since the incident at Project Purity, the citizens of the Enclave began to notice a change in the benign once AI. Since taking control of Liberty Prime, Eden was much more prone to ranting about the evils of communism, and spouting off violent threats like an action movie hero high on meth. Of course he continued on blissfully unaware of this, 2001 a Space Odyssey was a very popular movie in Raven Rock, as such most of the citizenry were far too paranoid to start talking about the all seeing all hearing artificial intelligence behind his back.

Seated on the sides of the table were the various officers who managed the Enclave's military.

Closest to Eden on the left side was Major Walter, head of operations at project purity. The elderly man had recently been reassigned to military service from his old job as head of the science division. He was a very interesting man, eccentric at best, a complete loon at worst. But there was no one else in the Enclave who could figure out all the strange happenings in the Wasteland as he.

Opposite to him sat Major Peter, commander of the expeditionary forces across the western wilderness of the Capital Wasteland. Smart, abrasive, and young were the easiest ways to describe him. He was a maverick in the organization, but served his country well being in charge of the troops and outposts rough-necking it in the boonies.

Next down the line was Major Olivia, the base commander for Andrews Air Base. The blonde woman was stoic to a fault, not even a direct hit from a mini-nuke would be sufficient to shake the implacable slight grin that seemed painted on her face. This was of course an important attribute in her position, the good major had the difficult assignment of maintaining the Enclave's vertibird fleet, keeping the many scientists working on base in line, ensuring production quotas were met, and most challenging of all, she had direct supervision over Sigma Squad which accounted for nearly half the work she had to do.

Sitting almost nearly at the opposite end of the table from President Eden's camera, at the right hand of the Colonel was Captain Williams, the XO of Raven Rock. He was the odd man out in the commanders meeting, only being an executive officer, however most of the actual duties of running Raven Rock that couldn't be completed by Eden's loyal army of tin men fell to him, as the commanding officer of the base was the highest ranking officer in the military.

Which brings us to the end of table where sat the Lone Wanderer, commanding officer of the military. This would come as a surprise to many as the redhead was currently lying slouched forward in her chair, her head resting comfortably on the stack of various reports that provided her makeshift pillow, a puddle of drool slowly spreading across the sheets and graphs.

It hadn't always been this way, only a month ago she was very attentive in the meetings and paying attention to every word that was said. However, the combined effort of running the military, overseeing the huge number of ongoing projects in the wasteland, negotiating with the various groups, and still going on adventures to help win the favor of said groups was taking a severe toll on the young woman.

So as it had for the past few weeks, the meeting continued without the Colonel in spite of the increasingly loud snoring which announced her presence. The various commanders talked, exchanging ideas, then they would give the Colonel the crib notes version of what had been discussed when she regained consciousness.

Williams sat and listened to Major Walter discuss in ludicrous detail the new upgrades he had installed into the purifier, what cup-holders had to do with production he would never know. Meanwhile Major Peter attempted to convince him to get to the point. 'You'd almost think those two were father and son the way they go at' Williams thought as he rested his head in his hand.

His attention was soon caught be another sound. He turned and looked at the Colonel who was now mumbling something in her sleep, the only words he could make out being "please" and "no."

Williams wasn't the only one who noticed, Major Olivia sitting across from him heard it as well. She simply shrugged her shoulders; it wouldn't be the first time the Wanderer started talking in her sleep.

"Please, no I'm just an innocent school girl…" That managed to catch everyone's attention. The argument between majors Peter and Walter fell silent as both turned to look at the sleeping colonel.

"I don't know it was your swimming pool, I… Oh no, please don't do that, what will the other girls think?" she continued to spin the dreamy tale in mumble. "No, not the tenta…ah AH." She moaned.

By now the entire point of the meeting was lost. President Eden was very confused on what exactly tentacle and swimming pools had to do with moaning sounds commonly heard by base staff engaging in the act of reproduction. Major Walter was lost in some epiphany that had come from the Wanderer's dream. Major Peter was trying his best not to burst out into fits of laughter listening to some bizarre fantasy of his commanding officer. And through it all, Major Olivia cracked a light smile and shook her head.

Like any good XO, Williams decided it was time to intervene before the Colonel buried herself any deeper. He gave a light nudge on her shoulder, which sent her rocketing into a standing position screaming "NOT THE TENTACLES!"

Her brain then managed to break out of the stall and the Wanderer remembered where she was. She glanced around at the table and looked at the light grey uniformed officers starring at her. As soon as she realized what she had been dreaming about, her face started to heat up in embarrassment and horror.

One particularly awkward silence later, "I'm sorry" the Wanderer said, "I must have dozed off…" she did her best to hide her embarrassment, but her face being the same color as her hair was a clear sign of just how flustered she was.

"Yes, well, continuing on, Major Walter what were you saying about Brahmin and these mysterious Milk Shakes?" Eden moved to change the subject, sending the Major into another coma inducing rant.

As the officers began to zone out once again, William's thoughts turned to his commander; he knew that the Colonel had been exhausted, but any attempt he had made at bringing this up had been quickly and a few times violently, dismissed. The captain tried to keep up with the ongoing discussion, but eventually gave up and resigned himself to uploading the president's overly detailed notes on the meeting. Williams had more important things to worry about.

Forty Minutes Later:

The meeting ended as most meetings did, without much new to report. After all, most of the real work of operations was taken care of outside of the office. One might wonder what President Eden hoped to accomplish with having so many meetings. The Enclave was one of the few organizations in the Wasteland that had the ability to communicate faster than the speed of smell.

To be honest, it had more to do with not wanting to be the messenger who had a good chance of being shot. The Enclave's leadership, aside from the Colonel, had little interest in challenging the semi homicidal AI.

The Wanderer stumbled out of the room, and almost smacked her head against the door doing so. Her yawn was loud enough that several passing infantry turned to look as she stretched her arms over her head. She shivered slightly as the underground base was infamously cold; not trusting the sudden attention the troops were giving her chest, she quickly buttoned up her officer's coat. "Damned perverts," she swore as they quickly turned back to what they were doing, "you'd almost think they haven't seen nipples in their lives."

It took her every shred of concentration to avoid running into a wall or falling face first into the floor. Granted, this had to do partly with the terrible lighting throughout the base, 'maybe Eden enjoys watching people run into walls' the Colonel wondered. But today she couldn't blame her lack of coordination on the layout of the base, or her addiction to nuka cola; rather her problem today, as it had been for the past few weeks was exhaustion. As simple as it sounds, the Wanderer had not gotten enough sleep for the last month to do half of the work she was doing, and the few nights that she did have time to sleep, she usually lay in her bed looking up at the ceiling for a few hours. The few times she did get any sort of sleep was at any meeting when Major Walter or President Eden opened their mouths, or microphone in the latter's case.

The last few months for the Wanderer had been a blur. Ever since being promoted to Colonel, her days were a cluster of activity. Even after pawning off most of the personnel issues to Captain Williams and control of her trade empire to Augustus Autumn, she still had constant inspections of the troops and facilities, the endless negotiations with the all the groups she had met across the wasteland, and trying to build a friendlier relationship with people across the Wasteland after Autumn's "do what I say or die" negotiating style backfired. Throw in a few life and death decisions every day, and it wasn't hard to see why she was running head first towards and early grave.

Today had been particularly bad. The Lone Wanderer's dreams had been bad recently but that nightmare in the meeting was particularly graphic. She hadn't had one of those dreams since her friends had broken into the overseer's secret video stash and watched something labeled Hentay or something stupid like that. The Wanderer was so tired that she didn't notice that someone was following her, much less talking to her until he grabbed her arm.

"Mam," Captain William's asked holding onto her elbow, "are you alright?"

Dismissively she replied "yes, I'm perfectly fine Captain there is no need to worry."

"Well, um, you were about to walk into the mens locker room."

She turned to look, and sure enough, the familiar stick picture of a man wearing a power armor helmet was staring back at her from the door. 'I could have sworn I was heading for my quarters…'

"Did you mistake it for your room again mam? You're not even on the right floor this time." Her head sank in humiliation. "Let me help you…"

"I'm fine Captain." She replied with a non-subtle hint of nastiness as she started for the stairway, or at least where she hoped it was; her internal map was suffering from highly in her brain drained state. Yet still her dutiful XO continued following her.

"With all due respect mam, I think you're lying."

"Williams I don't have time to argue with you today, could you just give me the lowdown on what I have on the docket today." She said with a mix of exhaustion and frustration.

The captain took a moment to gather his courage, the last time he had tried to convince her to get some rest it ended with a lunch tray and a black eye that had just recently healed. "How about more than a few hours of sleep mam, you're working yourself to…"

"Please Captain." She interrupted, not wanting to get into another version of the same argument they had been going through over the past week.

William's shook his head and began reading the schedule off of his pipboy, "at 9:30 you will take off on VB Two One in hanger 3 for an inspection of the Andrews facilities, at 14:45 you have a meeting with someone over in Canterbury Commons about trade routes, 18:20 you are scheduled to meet with Alistar Tenpenny about stationing a garrison at the tower, you have some miscellaneous assignments written in about a deal over in Big Town, and then you return to Raven Rock sometime between 00 hours and 300 hours." Her head bobbed up in down in what appeared to be a nod as they reached the stairwell.

As they descended to the living quarter on level 2, Williams was sure to keep close enough to prevent her from having nasty spill down the stairs. While he was usually occupied with administration of the base personnel, the Lone Wanderer was beginning to occupy a good amount of his attention.

"Mam, permission to speak freely?" the captain asked as they reached the proper floor.

"Not if you keep referring to me as mam," at least her sarcasm had not been affected by her lack of sleep.

"Of course, uh, Colonel." For some reason referring to her in such a non formal manor just felt wrong, typically it would be on a first name basis, but no one knew what her name was. "You need to take a break. I know that you have at least a few officers that you could delegate some of these jobs to."

"Captain," she began with a sigh, "I really do appreciate your concern, after all it reflects well on you as a leader, caring for the wellbeing of those under your command…", oh that's what she meant, "however most of the people we're working with across the Wasteland I have experience in dealing with, and it would be a waste of time and resources sending in someone completely new to build a rapport. And thanks to the efforts of Colonel Autumn, most people still have a shoot on site order when they see Enclave. At least when it is me they usually stop shooting.

"Besides," she said turning to face him as they reached her quarters, "we're living in a nuclear wasteland, it isn't like I can hop on a plane and fly to Hawaii." Before the Captain could say another word she turned and walked into her room, "I'm going to try and get a few minutes of sleep before my meetings, hold the fort while I'm gone." She said with a slight grin as she sealed the door.

"… Yes, Colonel" he replied weakly as he walked away, trying to find some way to solve this problem.

Raven Rock Base, Several hours later:

The job of running a base is a very boring affair, dealing with various personnel issues of who harassed who, health concerns, and people being unnerved by the video cameras watching everything they do, were the usual highlights of the day. But just like every other day, Captain Williams sat at his desk filling out various forms and reading from the ever growing stack of reports delivered to him. It was inglorious work, but it was the work that kept the Enclave operational, and he would much rather take care of it himself than rely on President Eden to handle it. The last time the President had indulged in management it had ended badly, to say the least.

The work of administration is boring, but it today it particularly bad. Problem was the Captain's mind was already preoccupied when he started, and now he was working at a snail's pace.

He knew that she was working herself to death, and because of that her work was starting to suffer, but even when she took time off from being a Colonel, she would go do other tasks and jobs around the Wasteland and would come back even more tired than when she left. He had talked to President Eden about it, but he had given the same answer that the Colonel loved to give, and since she knew everyone in the Wasteland, it was impossible to send her far enough away. Some help the A.I. had been.

Speak of the devil, "Captain Williams." The President called through the intercom, "There is something that I want you to see down in the science labs."

"Can it wait sir? I'm filling out some important restraining orders."

"Oh come now Captain, surely you can spare some time for the pursuit of science?"

Based on what President Eden and the science staff at the base considered the "noble pursuit of science" it was usually better for your health to turn and run the other way as fast as possible. The guards had a bet going on how long they had until the scientists unleashed a horde of evil zombie minions on the wasteland.

Still, boredom was a terrible thing, and perhaps going down to the lab could help give him some ideas on how to help the Colonel.

Unlike the Colonel, even when his mind was wandering, Williams knew his way around Raven Rock. It didn't take him long to make his way into the creepy stasis tube lined home of the research staff.

"Captain Williams," Dr Holt said "What brings you down here?"

"I came down to see some of the new developments; I heard you all have been making some amazing progress." The Captain replied.

She gave the captain what had to be the biggest and scariest smile that he had ever seen. "Oh where should we start?" She said grabbing him by the arm and nearly throwing him off his feet. "We've just completed research on how to make the wild dogs roaming across the Wasteland into trained cybernetic killers, upgrading the new hellfire armor to actually protect against fire, a new biological enhancement cocktail for our solider, and how to grow hydroponic sweet potatoes.

"I wanted to show him the new simulators doctor." President Eden's voice boomed through the lab.

Her face fell in disappointment, "of course, no one ever wants to hear about the potatoes." Williams swore he could see a tear fall down her face. "Right this way."

She led him into a massive side room that was kept at a low light, where several large metal pods sat connected to a huge bank of computers on that filled the center of the room by several massive snaking cables. The whole set up was being run by a pair of men wearing technician's uniforms that sat at the central computer system doing, well, no one could really tell what they were doing aside from arguing with each-other and eating microwave Salisbury Steak. Williams was impressed at the sight, "pretty fancy equipment, who built them."

"No idea," one of the computer techs yelled, "One of the search teams in the Wasteland found them."

The Captain walked up and looked into the pods and all the equipment inside of them, "you guys found these in the Wasteland, where?"

"In an abandoned vault underneath some garage just south of here, I think the scouts said it was one-twelve or maybe it was one-eight, hell if we know." The other computer tech said between mouthfuls of microwave dinner.

"Please forgive me but who exactly are you two?" Williams asked the techs.

"I'm Zed."

"And I'm Ned."

'How the hell am I going to keep track of that?' Williams thought as he went from one pod to the other, Williams had to wonder "What exactly do these oversized cans do?"

"My you are a curious Jarhead aren't you?" One of the techies mocked, Ned I think. "They're simulation pods, they can create any environment you program into them and drop a person right into it, they can see, feel, taste, smell and hear anything you want them to."

"And it's in color since we finished the software upgrade." Zed noted with pride.

William's took this in as he continued browsing the pods, when he came upon one that was frosted over. "Have you guys been running the AC hard down here?"

"No sir, oh master of the electric bill, there was a cryo stasis system attached to them." Ned said, standing up and walking over to the pod in question, "We took them all off so that the technophiles in the other lab could get their jollies," Dr Holt shot him a look that made him wince, "I guess we missed one."

"Is that right?" Williams muttered as he began to rub some of the ice off the glass pod. He managed to defrost a small section and both men took a peek inside. The computer tech let out a rather unmanly shriek as he fell backwards, "I guess that wasn't all you missed." Williams noted.

The pod in question contained a body, one that had a definite case of freezer burn from being left in stasis for too long. The only thing identifiable on the abominable snow man was the blue and yellow Vault-Tec jumpsuit.

Regaining his composure, Ned stood back up and dusted his lab coat off. "It looks like he died when they turned off the life support to pull the pods out. That's curious; the others had all thawed out when the scouts found them." Zed said as he stood up from his computer.

"There were others?" Williams asked.

"Yeah, they said there nine people who had been pulled out of the pods by the robots, this one must have still been alive." Zed added as he joined the pair.

"Emphasis on been, he's a popsicle now. Let's get him out of there before he starts to stink up the lab." They all agreed that Ned was right. Besides, Dr Holt's dogs and potatoes hadn't had dinner yet.

It took a little "persuasion" to open the iced up pod, but within a few minutes they pulled the body out and gave it to a grateful doctor to feed her various projects, leaving Williams and the two computer experts in the lab.

"So you can simulate any of the environments and situations programmed into the database. That will help our people on training much more than the cardboard cutouts we use now."

"That's not the half of it Captain," Ned boasted, "we can use it for just about anything, hell I plan on taking a sexy beach trip to Hawaii."

Something in Williams brain clicked as soon as they mentioned Hawaii. "As in a vacation?"

"Well duh!" Ned shot back.

"Sir." Added Zed, giving his counterpart a nasty look.

Williams didn't even notice the remarks; he simply stood up and took off towards Eden's control room. All the while thinking 'Eureka.'

Attached File: History of the Enclave

Formed Prior to the Great War in 2077, the Enclave was an organization of military, corporate, and political elite and leaders and a large detachment of naval and marine personnel (and their families) that retreated to the Poseidon Oil Platform and rode out the nuclear war. They remained there for nearly two hundred years, observing the various vault experiments and preparing for their return.

In 2242 AD, the Enclave under the leadership of President Richardson made their return to the mainland United States. Utilizing advanced technology the group became militarily and politically involved in what had once been California, and made plans to wipe out the population of the Wasteland using a modified Forced Evolutionary Virus. This plan backfired when a wastelander made his way to the Poseidon Platform, killing President Richardson and demolishing the base, though not before the Enclave was able to evacuate most of their personnel and some of their industrial equipment.

The majority of the Enclave made their way to Washington DC and established Raven Rock as their new base of operations. Under the leadership of President Eden, the Enclave survivors were able to expand the prewar fallout shelter and convert it into an underground city where they were able to rebuild their power. A small garrison was left at the base in Navarro California, but this base was wiped out by forces from the New California Republic a short time later.

Because of the damage they had suffered in California, the Enclave remained inactive in the Wasteland for quite some time, only sending out a few foot patrols. This changed when they got intelligence that Project Purity was being brought back online in 2277. Since then, Enclave forces have made a dramatic move to secure all of the Capitol Wasteland. None can argue whether they have the power to accomplish this goal.

(Tune in next time as we return to the Wander's adventures in progress)