For a moment Nate wondered if he had blinders on. It had felt almost normal, walking with the Brotherhood, listening to their banter, their stories as they mourned Knight Brach (the man who'd stepped on the landmines in Lexington) and their general interactions. But the folks back in Sanctuary had been less than pleased to suddenly have half a dozen heavily armed strangers dumped in their laps and in need of their medical supplies.
To his credit, the professor had been willing to help and he and Haylen worked together in an effort to save Worwick's life. It was surprising actually. Maybe it was the shock of their new lives finally settling in or the constant barrage of day to day survival, but Professor Widmer almost seemed like an entirely different person.
It was a good look for him.
Nate chewed on a dried hockey puck of a snack cake and sighed. If the knights had found his story of two century cryostasis hard to swallow, he in turn had found some of the things they shared to be difficult to wrap his head around.
Super mutants, the result of a pre-war experiment gone horribly wrong or perhaps, horribly right. Danse in particular had a chip on his shoulder about those green giants and Nate hoped it would be some time before he had to deal with them. Large, dumb, resistant to small arms fire and capable of using guns and explosives. Sounded like a hard thing to fight.
And then there were the synth infiltrators. Androids nigh indistinguishable from humans built by a shadowy organization called the Institute for reasons not completely clear. Other than the obvious spying of course. Dangerous in a different way than the mutants as their programming could be activated at any time, causing them to slaughter anyone within reach. Programmable people.
It was the stuff of nightmares. Dangerous technology outpacing humanity and running amok.
Nate finished off the rest of his snack cake as Danse approached the campfire. The man didn't sit, just sort of stood there awkwardly and Nate had to wonder if the paladin ever actually took his power armor off. Nate offered the box of fancy lads to him.
"A man of culture." Danse remarked gratefully, removing a snack cake and biting into it with a small measure of enthusiasm. After doing what they could for their injured man, the recon squad had checked out vault 111 and marveled at the truth to his story. Haylen most of all; the scribe seemed beside herself with the technology, citing it as it being valuable enough to earn the whole team promotions.
"As I stated before, while the Brotherhood's main goal is cleansing the commonwealth, the primary directive of our recon team is to map out the region for sources of pre-war tech, records and other useful things." Danse paused, taking a sip of his coffee, brewed with something they called a silt bean.
"Once again, you have our thanks, Nate."
Nate shrugged.
"To be blunt," Danse continued, "It's important to keep pre-war tech out of the hands of those who would misuse it, and there are quite a few sites of interest in the Commonwealth, military installations and other things of that nature. We know this as we're not the first recon team to come through here. Most teams came back with a treasure trove of pre-war artifacts, but the team before us never returned. As it stands, we are also on the lookout for any sign of them."
It was a noble goal, and one that made sense. Especially after he'd learned that the Brotherhood had been founded by a squad of soldiers who'd survived the bombs falling and wished to prevent the world from ever repeating that mistake.
"The locals," Danse went on, indicating Angie, Jules and Sturges, who were watching them warily from a short distance away, "Are not exactly pleased that we have used up what remained of their medical supplies. We will repay them, of course."
He took another snack cake out and bit into it.
"But more pressing, is that Haylen has found that there is a nearby satellite station."
Nate nodded thoughtfully. The Brotherhood sure was obsessed with pre-war tech. Or maybe it was just Danse?
"Though I detest the thought of leaving him here alone, it will be some time before Knight Worwick recovers. I am willing to trust his well-being to your people, but if that trust is betrayed—"
"You've nothing to fear from these people," Nate said curtly. "If anything they're annoyed with me."
Danse nodded sharply and changed the subject.
"We need to do further exploration and reconnaissance in this region."
"What about the factory in Lexington?" Nate pressed. "You said we could discuss it."
Danse handed the box of cakes back and looked to be pondering the thought.
"I would prefer to discuss it with this Preston Garvey, especially if he intends to bring reinforcements to deal with the situation." He waved a hand. "According to Scribe Haylen, the parts that are potentially in that factory would be most useful and cannot be allowed to remain in the hands of common thugs."
Nate stared and the penny dropped.
"Of course," Danse added hastily, "I do not mean to say that rescuing kidnapped civilians is not a priority either. I'm willing to wait for your minutemen for as long as it takes Worwick to get back on his feet. If they do not return before then we will see about mounting an operation by ourselves."
Nate hoped that wouldn't be necessary. From what the knights had told him, they estimated the Rev-heads to number around forty to fifty, most armed with blades and blunt objects, but there were more guns than they would have expected as well as a few turrets. Lexington was rife with crude watchtowers and bridges that connected several buildings and there was a significant feral ghoul presence as well.
Danse believed that with proper planning and tactics and well as manpower, it would be easy to breach the factory and kill or maim enough of the raiders to get the remainder to cut and run, though he expressed concern about the fact that prior to Nate's arrival, they had managed to damage Keane's armor, forcing him to exit it and leaving that suit behind. Nate suspected that that was another of Danse's priorities.
But the manpower aspect was what Nate found worrying.
The way Sturges told it, Preston Garvey had been extremely gung-ho about linking up with more minutemen and rescuing the captives. Chronic hero syndrome, unchecked idealism or both. Preston was never one to sit still as long as there was another settlement that needed his help.
He'd bring help, no doubt about it. According to his friends at least. But the disaster at Quincy they talked about gave Nate the impression that most of the minutemen were not cut from the same cloth as Preston.
"In the meantime, that satellite station is worth a look." Would you be willing to aid us in this endeavor? As we are down two men, we could use the help."
Danse was as straight-forward as they came. An honest soldier.
"I don't see why not." Nate replied.
"Outstanding."
As Danse walked away to find the other members of his squad, Nate toyed with the idea of asking about enlistment. It had been mentioned that Haylen was a relatively new recruit compared to the rest of them, though he hadn't heard anything about how one went about joining their military.
For that's what it was.
Nate got up and stretched.
He was exhausted mentally. Their new life took some adjusting to and he wasn't convinced he was handling it all that well. What he needed was for Nora to return so he could beg her not to go running off again. He was second guessing himself for not going after her. It had seemed prudent to collect intel instead of getting lost going after her, but Nora wasn't military. Neither was Preston.
With no long distance communication available, he would have been lying if he said he wasn't anxious.
He just did a very good job of hiding it.
Was she having an easier time than he was? He tried to tell himself he was numb to it, but after meeting Recon Squad Gladius and hearing about their mission and learning a bit about them, he felt like a relic.
A dusty museum piece. Sure he still had his training, but these enemies were fought for the purpose of survival, to erase the mistake of the past. His past. The one he'd been ripped out of. Because the resource wars had been all for nothing. There were no more Reds to protect the country from and there was no country left to protect either.
The knights had told him of other regions eking out an existence in America's irradiated corpse, Point Lookout, Ronto and the Pitt to name a few. On the other coast the NCR had formed a semblance of a government, but the Brotherhood had gotten conflicting reports about the state of the Mojave Wasteland. There'd been a huge battle over Hoover Dam between the NCR and at least two other factions around five years ago and the victor was still unclear.
Then there was the Enclave, descendants of members of the government and the military industrial complex. Their goal was to rebuild America at the cost of eradicating every impure human being they found. Supposedly they'd had their back broken at Adams Air Force base by the Brotherhood about a decade prior and there'd been little to no sign of them since.
It was a lot of information that he had little context for and it made his head spin.
This was not his world anymore. His fight had long since ended.
Was there still a place for him in the commonwealth?
Nora sat hunched over, tears streaming down her face as Dogmeat whimpered softly and nuzzled her hand. The screaming had stopped roughly a half hour ago according to her pipboy's clock and it was her fault. The siren had attracted the attention of a second deathclaw and she was pretty sure everyone, raider, townie and Preston was dead.
Judging from the unholy noises drifting up to her perch in the tower, the beasts were mating. She peeked over the side for a second and regretted it. She supposed this was how she was going to die. Eventually the beasts would leave and she'd have to hoof it back to Sanctuary alone or they would stay and circle the tower until she died of starvation.
But no, her mind drifted back to a pep talk her father had given her when she'd failed to make the track team in highschool.
What? Ah never knew my daughter t'be the giving up sort. Alright yeah. You been knocked down a peg, Nora. But that don't matter. Errybody gets knocked down. What matters is the getting up.
Think, she told herself.
She could unload the remaining charges in her musket and then run like hell. Just wait and see if the beasts left, there was no reason to just jump to the worst case scenario of them waiting her out. The stress of the world ending and her baby being kidnapped wore on her heavily, as did not knowing if her husband was going to recover. But she clung to her memories of her dad. He wouldn't have wanted her to give up. To roll over and die because things had gotten terrifying.
No, she could at least—
There was a rumbling.
"YEEE-HOOOOO!"
Nora popped up warily, searching for the source of the noise. She didn't have to wait long.
A dozen radstags thundered into the town, each bearing a saddle and a man or a woman holding wielding sawn off shotguns, double barrels, laser muskets or pipe pistols and hollering at the top of their lungs. The deathclaws untangled themselves and roared, one of them standing up to its full height before running towards the cavalry.
The riders strafed the pair, shooting low and quickly blowing out one of the beasts knees. It went down bow-legged, churning up dirt with its claws and tail. The other pounced, knocking a stag and the man riding it into the dirt where the pair were quickly torn to pieces. The limping deathclaw struck out with one angular claw and severed the lead radstag's front leg, sending the man atop it tumbling to the ground. It fell upon the poor two-headed creature and proceeded to eviscerate it, but the man got away.
The riders stuck to the same tactic, drawing the beasts out to the town center and circling them like vultures. and sooner than Nora would have believed possible, both beasts were limping pitifully, their legs useless as they tried to pull themselves forward. They were summarily dispatched in a hail of bullets and laser bolts that reduced to smoking corpses.
"HEY!" One of them hollered up to her. "YOU CAN TURN THAT CRAP OFF NOW!" Nora pulled the air raid switch into the off position and was struck by how silent things suddenly were. She hustled down the staircase, drying her eyes on the back of her sleeve and trying to gather herself. Bad to look weak in front of these new people, especially since she'd have to explain what the hell happened.
She opened the door of the tower to see a couple faces staring at her curiously, eyes raking over the blue of her vault suit. One man dismounted, slinging his hunting rifle over a shoulder nonchalantly as he approached her. He was in his sixties or so, if she had to guess, a bristly grey mustache taking over most of his face.
"Lady, yer goddam lucky those two were juveniles. Would have been a helluva lot worse if an alpha or matriarch had wandered into town."
Juveniles?!
She'd noted that the one seemed smaller than the one in Concord but she hadn't thought of why that was.
He gave her an odd look but offered her a handshake.
"Barney Rook. The Salem Volunteer Militia is at your service." She shook his hand and grimaced, it was a like shaking hands with a bear, and he was real interested in the pipboy. But there was something about name that was synonymous with Salem. She couldn't place it.
"You ain't from around here," he stated. "You a trader from vault 81?"
"Vault 111, actually. I'm Nora."
Hang on. The Rook family military surplus store? Her dad had loved getting ammo there.
Nora snapped back to the present. There was blood and body parts everywhere. She couldn't understand why the riders were so calm about it. Was life in the Commonwealth truly so harsh that a scene so grisly was treated as normal? Didn't cause any outward display of horror? At least the people inspecting their fallen comrade had the decency to to look upset. For fuck's sake, there was a human arm laying in the dirt several feet away and a pile of steaming entrails straight ahead. The little stall that had been selling plastic flamingo's had been reduced to kindling from which the lower half of a woman protruded.
"Brave thing you did, hitting the alarm." Barney said as the handshake ended.
Nora grimaced. If she was being honest she had gone for the tower mostly because the high ground had seemed like the safest place to be. She opened her mouth to ask if they'd encountered any fleeing survivors on their way into town but she was interrupted by a grating noise and a thump. Her eyes widened in shock as townsfolk started to climb out of cellars hidden behind the shacks. Maybe in her panic she'd thought more people had died than was true.
Preston came into view and Nora let out a sigh of relief she hadn't realized she was holding in.
"Barney Rook, you old warhorse. Riding in for the rescue once again, eh?"
The older man shook Preston's hand as well, pulling him in and clapping him on the back.
"Garvey you sonovagun. Wish we'd gotten here sooner, might have saved a couple more folks."
"You came as soon as you could," Preston said, nodding in Nora's direction. "Thanks to her. I saw her dip inside the tower. Would have gone for the high ground myself if I hadn't been corralling some young 'uns into the nearest cellar."
Again. Nora grimaced, averting her eyes. It had been more out of self-preservation than anything else. Christ, she hadn't even registered that there had been kids in danger. The townsfolk spread out, inspecting the damage and weeping over the fallen. A few of the corpses laying about were wearing raider gear, and Nora whole-heartedly hoped none of them had made it out of the town.
"—thing's off." Rook was saying to Preston. 'In the air. Ever since Quincy. The mirelurks been strangely ornery this season. Been coming further inland than they should. If we didn't have those seaside defenses, we'd be in trouble. But that ain't all. You remember Frieda Whitman?"
"Yeah," Preston replied. "Runs the diner on the edge of town right?"
Barney shook his head, clearing his throat and spitting on the ground.
"Not anymore. Spooks got her at some point. Shot her replacement less than a week ago. Salem's been on high alert ever since."
"Damn," Preston said casually, as though Barney wasn't talking about murdering a woman. "How'd you know?"
"Well, it was the little things first. Messing up regular's orders. Keeping odd hours. But the kicker was her eaten mirelurk. Everybody knew Frieda was allergic to mirelurk. Nearly died as a child eaten some, and about a week ago, she ate a whole portion of mirelurk without getting sick. Even said it was her favorite."
"So you killed her?" Nora cut in incredulously.
"Popped her," Barney said with a nod. "Found the mechanical bits in her skull after the autopsy."
"I don't follow." Nora said, shaking her head.
"Synths? The gotdang metal men wearing flesh like clothes? How do vault dwellers ever make it out here?"
"Well, I mean, people have mentioned them once or twice. But I was under the impression they looked like robots." Nora said uncertainly.
"Some do. Mannequin looking assholes. Not the spy ones though."
And Nora had been under the impression that people were just trigger-happy in the future. Maybe it was time to get some more information on the Institute people kept mentioning. Of course, it was hard to find people that didn't clam up immediately like they were afraid they were about to summon the devil when the topic was brought up.
"Anyway, what're you doing this far north Garvey? You lookin to link up with us? I heard most of Hollis's boys didn't make it out of Quincy."
"Well, Nora and I were actually heading to Salem when this attack happened." Preston proceeded to give Barney the rundown on Jared's gang kidnapping teens and youths from the settlements to the west of Lynn Woods. How they were suspect number one for having taken Nora's baby out of the vault too.
She wished she had a better description of the kidnappers to give beyond a bald scarred man wearing leather armor and a pair of people in hazmat suits, but it had happened so fast, and then she'd been frozen again.
"Quite the story there." Barney mused, stroking his chin in thought. "How d'you figure a bunch of raiders had the smarts to get into a vault though?"
Nora answered that one with a shrug. If she was being brutally honest with herself, the kidnappers could have been anyone and could be anywhere. It wasn't something she liked to think about.
"It's the only lead we have. Apparently this Jared guy is running experiments of some kind in his headquarters."
Barney sucked at his teeth.
"I know y'all need help to assault something like that but, I don't know if we can spare the manpower. We sent riders and more to Quincy, we answered the call and not a one of them made it back."
Nora's eyes narrowed. She did not get dragged through a bunch of shanty-towns and witness people die every step of the way just for the ones Preston wanted to enlist to say they weren't going to help.
"You sure helped Lynn Woods out. Afraid you'll die of old age on the way to our settlement?" she snapped, feeling pressure building in her head. Nate was the one that handled things with more tact. He was generally the calm one, which was why he handed her the phone whenever the insurance or the credit card company was giving him a hard time. She'd chewed out many call center reps in her day.
To his credit, Barney seemed unperturbed by her outburst.
"Where'd you find this one, Garvey?"
"Kind of a long story." he said with a sardonic grin, and Nora debated whether or not it'd be acceptable to whack him for making light of things.
"Look, I get it. You need some kind of quid pro quo right?" she went on, crossing her arms. "Bottom line, we came here to get help. What's it gonna cost us?"
"Qui whut now?" Barney said, raising an eyebrow. "But I catch your drift and we ain't mercenaries. It 's a matter of having enough people left to protect Salem effectively."
"Okay, well what happens when they push east, after they've built up their forces. What happens when you get caught between a raider army and a mirelurk infestation and there's nobody left to come help you?"
"Fill'em full o' holes ah reckon."
"Not if they get you first!" she replied defiantly, seeing orange and then yellow dancing on the edges of her eyelids.
"What she means is..." Prestons started to say, looking worried. But Barney waved him off. He took a step forward, inhaling deeply like he was about to scold her. But instead, he did little more than wag his finger at her.
"You've got balls to talk to me like that. I can respect it. You need the help that bad eh?" He shook his head wearily. "To tell you truth, I wish more folk had some fire in their bellies. Minutemen've been going t'hell ever since Becker kicked the bucket."
Was that all it would take to convince him? If only everything was this simple.
"James Wire's platoon turned raider," Barney ranted. "And Colonel Marbury is a lily-livered chickenshit and he ever shows his face in Salem I'm gonna slap the shit out of him." He focused back on Nora and Preston. "I gotta feeling that more and more people are gonna be needing Salem's help before long. I guess," he grumbled. "I could put a squad together. Fifteen, maybe twenty people? And eight of those being riders."
"If riders are your best men, we'll need more than that, Make it sixteen."
If they replicated that deathclaw maneuver on the raiders, it'd be a quick fight, wouldn't it?
Barney scowled.
"We're talking about people risking their lives for another settlement. Not bartering for tatos and corn. Ten."
"Fourteen?" Nora asked, staring him down like he was a lawyer on the other side of the bench.
"A dozen and that's final." he said with a grunt. "I don't care for gambling with peoples lives. My men don't make it back, I'm holding you responsible, Missy. We've already gotta bury Halpert." he said, indicating the fallen rider. "Or, well what's left of him. Never let it be said that the Salem Volunteer Militia turned its back on anyone in need. But we've got to head back to Salem first, figure a couple things out. You can ride on the back of Bambi here with me."
Nora balked, staring at the radstag in consternation. She'd ridden horses in her youth and she supposed deer weren't all that different, but the two heads thing was still throwing her for a loop.
"Aren't you going to help Lynn Woods rebuild?"
Barney gave her an odd look and shook his head.
"The hell for? Threat's been dealt with. We're the Salem Volunteer Militia, lady. Not the Salem Volunteer Construction workers." He pulled a bottle of whiskey out of his saddlebag and popped the top off. Nora reminded herself that she still had a lot to learn about how the new world worked. No corporations. No municipal government. No trash pick up or police. Her dad would have loved the future. She smiled wryly. If everyone was as easy to convince as Barney Rook, maybe there was a place for her in the Commonwealth after all.