Afterword:
Selected excerpts from Marten, Nicholas J. "A Hundred Years After": The Commonwealth since the Fall of the Institute, 2288-2388 (Cambridge University Press, 2388).
THE FALL OF FORT APACHE:[1]
It has been nearly sixty years since the Fort Apache bunker fell to Commonwealth forces on May 11, 2330.
Built during the Russo-American "Cold War" of the mid-20th century as a retreat for the US government in the case of nuclear attack, it was occupied for a time by refugees fleeing the devastation of war in 2077 but had been abandoned and lost for nearly 200 years by the time the Purlaine discovered and re-fortified it in the late 2320s.
Of particular concern to Commonwealth forces in the lead-up to the assault was the presence of atomic warheads in the bunker, said to be aimed at targets along the American seaboard as part of a last-ditch, Cold War-era plan to destroy the country in case of a successful invasion. Although the status of the missiles was not known going into the bunker, it turned out that the Purlaine were indeed in possession of the necessary launch codes. The missile complex was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting of the battle, including in the silos themselves, where the last of the defenders attempted to key in the codes manually after losing the control rooms.
Ironically, while the missile control systems showed them to be fully operational (and in fact reported the manual launches as having been successful, to the horror of the Commonwealth forces watching the screens in the control room) the missiles themselves had actually been secretly disabled by the technicians responsible for maintaining them almost three centuries before.
An equally important objective of the attack was to rescue the captives – almost exclusively women and children – known to be held by the Purlaine. In this, they were only partially successful. Nevertheless, a mass slaughter of captives was averted, thanks mostly to the efforts of the women prisoners, a group of whom swarmed their guards the moment the attack began. Although most of these were killed, the rest were able to secure the prison compound and hold it until help arrived.
The first Commonwealth soldiers to storm the breach created when Nick Valentine triggered his micro-nuke were the re-formed Gunners, men who had settled secretly in the Commonwealth after their defeat at Quincy in 2309. Enraged by evidence of the atrocities committed by the Purlaine on their captives, they and the Minutemen who followed happily obliged the defenders' desire to fight to the death. Rumours persisted, however, that forces of the Warlord Clans took prisoners and summarily executed them. But the source of the rumours could not be determined and an investigation failed to confirm or deny them. Whatever the circumstances, none of the Purlaine who were at Apache that day ever returned home to Quebec.
THE NEW ARYAN CONFEDERACY:
Although it certainly didn't appear that way at the time, the invasion launched in 2329 by the New Aryan Confederacy (the so-called "Purlaine War", 2329-2331) was already failing by the time of the fall of Fort Apache. A number of factors played a role in this, but chief among them were internal tensions within the confederacy itself, an inevitable consequence of its anachronistic, white-supremacist ideology.
Although the "Pur Laine" themselves (the purebred, supposed "old stock" French Canadian families, from a phrase meaning "pure wool") were among the wealthiest and most powerful of the familes in the Laurentian area of the old Canadian province of Quebec, by 2330 they numbered no more than a few thousands in total population. That being the case, an explicitly white-supremacist ideology was always going to be a hard sell in areas as ethnically mixed as the Gaspé Peninsula and the Montreal-Quebec City Corridor. That being the case, it's a mystery why the Purlaine would have chosen to fight under such a self-defeating banner. Some scholars have suggested that the inbreeding necessary to maintain their racial purity had caused genetic defects – madness, to put it bluntly – among their ranks. In any case, it should have come to no surprise to anybody how quickly these fault lines opened up when the invasion began to falter after the defeat at Fort Apache. Indeed, with the clarity of hindsight, it's obvious that even had the combined Minutemen / Gunner / Clan force under Howard failed to take the bunker, the invasion could not have survived the serious resistance that was sure to follow as it pushed more deeply into the Commonwealth. Lightning raids, such as the one on Diamond City were one thing. The appearance of a full-on invasion force would have alerted the country on all sides, and triggered a massive response.
There is, however, no telling what damage the invaders might have caused or whether a future confederacy, unhampered by neo-Nazi foolishness and emboldened by the near success of the previous one, might have launched a new and perhaps ultimately successful attack. As it was, as the cracks widened, old hatreds re-appeared and the Confederacy turned on itself. The hegemony of the Purlaine Families was broken. Today, while residual strands of misogyny and racial supremacy still taint some elements of the culture there, the near-complete annihilation of the Purlaine in the ensuing civil war completely changed the political landscape in Quebec, leading to our current state of wary, but generally friendly, co-existence.
Some historians [2] have argued that the slaughter of Purlaine supporters during the fall of Fort Apache was a critical factor in the failure of the movement. There is no doubt this helped blunt the influence of that group on the wider Confederacy, although we would argue as above that the continuing strains that a long and drawn-out conflict would have placed on the Confederacy would eventually have had the same effect.
THE POST-WAR COMMONWEALTH:
The attack by the Purlaine Confederacy showed up one serious weakness suffered by the Commonwealth: the lack of a cohesive, central government. At the time of the Purlaine invasion, the Commonwealth consisted of a number of independent, self-governed, settlements of various sizes with the determinedly apolitical Minutemen as its only common institution.
This made the Commonwealth vulnerable to attack by anyone capable of rounding up a decent-sized force. Had the Warlord Clans, for example, ever managed to get past their mutual distrust and unite under a sufficiently capable and charismatic leader, they could in all probability have subjugated the Commonwealth entirely. It is a testament to the genius of Nate Howard that he was able to play off the clans against each other for so many years, ensuring they never arose as a viable threat.
Ironically, it was the Minutemen themselves who posed the greatest threat to the Commonwealth. "Power," as Nick Valentine once noted, "gets to be a habit after a while". Shortly after the end of the Purlaine War, a group of senior officers staged a coup d'etat, imprisoning Howard on charges of treason and declaring the "Democratic Republic of New England", with free elections, if and when. Howard, however, had been given ample warning (it is said by prostitutes in the employ of Maude Kelly, to whom the officers had unwisely confided) and had made his plans accordingly. The coup fizzled, the rank-and-file remained loyal, and the leaders were arrested and exiled.
The episode awakened the various civilian authorities of the Commonwealth to their danger, however, and at the Constitutional Convention of 2333, the Settlement Council was created and work begun on laying out the founding principles of a new nation, the present-day Commonwealth of New England States, or simply "the Commonwealth".
NATHANIEL A. HOWARD:
Much has been written about Nate Howard, the "Sole Survivor", as some call him, of Vault 111, who almost single-handedly re-established the Minutemen during the Institute War (2287-2288) and led them for nearly 60 years. His contributions to the Commonwealth cannot be understated. Interested readers are directed to Man Out of Time (Cambridge University Press, 7th edition, 2351), the multi-volume biography written by his adopted son, Dr. Shaun Howard, Rector of Cambridge University. Other, more popular and possibly more accessible works also abound.
Nothing is known, however, as to his ultimate fate. A widower for more than 30 years after the death of his wife, Piper Howard (neé Wright) in 2312, Howard was deeply affected by the death of his oldest friend, Nick Valentine, who sacrificed himself to open the breach at Fort Apache. Shortly after the Purlaine threat was disposed of, Howard went into seclusion at his home in the old Red Rocket station near Sanctuary Hills (now maintained as a museum).
With the help of "Madame Curie", a robot intelligence whose consciousness had been transferred to a humano-synth body by Dr. Helen Amari of Goodneighbour during the Institute War, Howard had been trying unsuccessfully to write his memoirs.[3] A letter, found on his desk after his disappearance in 2346 hints at his final fate.[4] Interestingly, Mme. Curie resigned her teaching post at Diamond City Collegiate Institute at about the same time, and also vanished.
Although there have been many unconfirmed sightings of both Howard and Curie in the years since (both together and separately, some reportedly from as far as way as the Mojave Desert) no trace of either one has ever been found. It is likely their ultimate fates will remain a mystery.
MAUDE KELLY:
Like General Howard, Maude "Mother" Kelly, a pre-War ghoul who operated a brothel in Carlisle Station during the Purlaine War, was deeply affected by the death of Nick Valentine, whom she had known in his human incarnation as a Boston police officer just after the Great War.[5] In 2334, she handed the keys to her business to her staff and simply walked away.
Kelly turned up again several years later at Fort Hancock (the erstwhile Fort Apache, now garrisoned as a forward base by the Minutemen), where she served for a time as a medic before disappearing again, this time re-surfacing in Diamond City, where she became Assistant (later Chief) Curator at the Diamond City Archives, a position she held from 2347-2385.
The last known surviving pre-War ghoul, her memories of life in the Commonwealth at the time of the Great War and especially in the immediate aftermath thereof have been a gold mine to historians. Sadly, at the time of this writing (2388) she has fallen more and more deeply into the somnolescent state that eventually affects these longest-surviving ghouls, and while she may yet rouse herself again, it seems unlikely. At nearly 330 years of age, Maude Kelly is rightly considered a national treasure for her memories and for her service to the Commonwealth, and her passing will be hard on those of us who have studied under her and worked with her over the years.
FRANK BAIRD:
Frank Baird of Baird's New Horizon Trading Co., out of New Bangor, Maine (the erstwhile Francois Bayard, who anglicized his name when he left the Gaspé) was devastated when news reached him of the death of his son and only child, Garry Baird (aka Garrick Bayard). He eventually located and retrieved his son's body, returning it to Maine for burial. In 2335, Baird returned secretly to the Gaspé, and for several weeks that fall and winter operated as a one-man guerrilla invasion force in the area around the village of Rimouski, committing murder and arson as the opportunity permitted.
He was eventually captured alive by the Gaspésie. His ultimate fate is unknown. In the Gaspé, they do not speak of it to outsiders.
LILY MARTEN:
Eleanor Lillian Marten survived the attack on Fort Apache and received accolades for the critical role she played in the battle. A few weeks later, she once again presented herself to the Minuteman recruiting station at Fort Carlisle. Her application was again rejected, this time when a routine medical examination showed her to be in the early stages of pregnancy – the product of her rape by Garrick Bayard.
Returning to Diamond City, she made the difficult decision not to terminate the pregnancy. After the baby was born, she returned to school, graduating in 2336 with a Certificate in Education from Diamond City College. She never married. For the next 40 years, until her death in 2377, she taught Science, Mathematics and French at Piper Wright Elementary School in Diamond City.
Like good teachers everywhere, "Miss Lily" gave us much more than what was in our textbooks. To the students who passed beneath her watchful eye she gave the gifts of passion and joy, of empathy and understanding, of confidence and humility. She taught us to seek the truth in all things and to confront the darkness wherever we found it. She was ferocious and kind and demanding and patient. She helped to make us human, and this is why I am proud to say that this beautiful woman was not only my teacher and mentor and friend, but also my mother.
Nicholas J. Marten, PhD., Professor of History
Cambridge University
June 19, 2388
NOTES:
1. Pronounced "Apazj", from a 19th century slang term for Parisian street gangs, suggesting that someone within the Purlaine leadership had a sense of humour. Or at least, of history.
2. See, for example, Mahendra et al, "People of the Knife", in the New Journal of New England History, Vol 35, pp. 16-43.
3. His unfinished manuscript along with the memoirs of Nick Valentine, the personal recollections of Maude Kelly and the record collections held by the Diamond City Archives, form the backbone of what is known about day-to-day life and factional politics in the Commonwealth at the time of the Institute War.
4, Letter, Nate Howard to Shaun Howard, 22 October, 2045, Howard Papers, Diamond City Archives, MSS-32-07-1001, Vol 12). See also "Ghosts", Lives and Letters: Voices of the Commonwealth, Maude Kelly and N. Marten, eds., (Goodneighbour: South Boston Publishing Co., 2375) pp. 201-213.
5. For a detailed explanation, see Nick Valentine and Jeannette Tandy, 2336, The Beautiful Heart: Case Files of Nick Valentine, Private Detective, 3rd edn, revised by N. Marten, Cambridge University Press, 2379.
-OOO-
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
Well I'll be damned. It turned out to be a love story after all.
If you've read this far, thank you. I've certainly enjoyed writing it and I hope you enjoyed reading it. My heartfelt thanks to everyone who has commented on the story, in particular Alexeij and Scrimshawpen, whose work in the Fallout universe is unparalleled an whose thoughtful comments have helped guide me in the development of this story. If you are a Fallout fan (particularly pre-Fallout 4) and haven't read their work already, you should go there now.
Finally - if you finished this story confused as to what happened, I really need to hear from you. The challenge in this story is making sure that the ending, when it appears, causes an "Aha!" moment for the reader. So if instead you're left with a "Huh?" moment, I need to know so I can revise accordingly.
Either way, I do appreciate if you don't leave spoilers in the comments; please PM me instead.