Chapter Three: Nil sine numine
August 20 2289, The Junction, Colorado
It's been twenty days since we left Hidden Valley. We're nearing the Junction, which is a city recently founded by escaped slaves from Caesar's Legion. There appear to be many non-feral ghouls in this region, we must make sure to not engage with any unless they fire at us. The Junction is an array of cobbled together farms and shacks—apparently some of the ghouls own vineyards for wine making. I wish Elder Casdin would let me interview the pre-war ghouls we encounter on the road, they've been around for over two hundred years at this point, and they must have a wealth of knowledge. They look disgusting sure, but they're still humans. Humans that bear scars from over two centuries ago.
Anita McNamara—Log Three
The Junction sprawled out hundreds of feet beneath Anita's feet. To her knowledge, this section of the city started almost a decade ago, when escaped Legion slaves from Denver started to move west and form their own settlements. Once they flew closer to the Junction, Anita understood why the escaped slaves chose this place. Sandy hued plateaus stretched towards the sky and a sparkling blue river ran through the valley, fueling the hardy pines that grew close to the river. Anita thought the lonely stretches of the 70 were beautiful in Utah, but Colorado stunned her with its vast mountain vistas and cerulean skies. Many of the settlements they had seen so far in Colorado along the 70 were rather small and appeared to be relatively new—she assumed that many of these settlements were founded by old Caesar's legion members and slaves, similarly to The Junction. Before the war, she had read that this place was called Grand Junction and it attracted many tourists that wanted to see the mountain vistas.
"I've had enough of this bullshit for the day" Moretti said as he stretched his arms in his seat while Josh started to circle the vertibird over a large parking lot on the outskirts of the city
"Language, Tomas" Smith commented with an eye roll.
Moretti turned to Chipeta. "Lo siento, mi amiga" he apologized in his first language. Anita and Veronica spoke broken Spanish; Moretti was thrilled when he found out that Chipeta was fluent in Spanish.
"No pasa nada" she answered, clearly unbothered by him swearing. Chipeta looked curiously towards the Junction as it grew closer—Anita guessed that this was the largest city she had ever seen so far. Anita estimated that there were approximately three thousand people living in the Junction, based on the flurry of activity she could see on the streets.
Smith grabbed a pair of binoculars from under his seat. Peering through them quickly, he focused on the parking lot on which they were about to land.
"We've got an armed group approaching, they appear hostile" Smith analyzed. "Be on guard" he advised them, reaching towards his belt to make sure his pistol was secure.
Anita glanced at Veronica, she hoped that she was ready to sweet talk some wastelanders into not shooting them on sight. Smith, despite his level-headed personality, was always far too willing to go into a situation guns-blazing whenever wastelanders were involved. Josh landed the vertibird swiftly onto the broken asphalt of an old parking lot. Their welcoming party were five lightly armored men wielding impressive assault rifles. Three of them were wearing what Anita suspected to be repurposed Legionnaire armor tinted black, a curious choice for escaped slaves.
"Halt!" one of them shouted and held up his hand. "What is your business here?" he inquired, pointing his rifle at Smith, Anita figured that he assumed Smith was in charge.
Anita turned to the armed man. "We are passing through the parts, we are part of the Brotherhood of Steel."
Two of the men whispered to each other behind their leader. He looked at them skeptically. "Are there more of you?" he asked while holding his assault rifle steady. She looked down and noticed that he had a peg leg.
"Yes, we're just ahead of a pack of several hundred. We're passing through here, we're going east to the Capital Wasteland. Do not worry, we will keep to ourselves and will not trouble any of the populace here" she assured the man.
"Several hundred?!" the man shouted, his wrinkled face developing a look of anger. "Sounds like an invading force to me." He slowly walked closer, carefully maintaining his balance on his wooden leg.
Anita held up her hands in frustration. "I understand your group's uneasiness. Not a single soul in the Brotherhood will lay a hand on anyone here. We have no interest in returning escaped slaves to the Legion in Denver. Nor are we allied with them" she said as she attempted to diffuse the situation.
The man rolled his eyes. "I served at Helios One, I know what the Brotherhood is capable of, and I'm not worried about the Legion in Denver in the slightest. Your brotherhood took my damn leg and nearly my life" he shouted bitterly.
Anita paused for a moment when he mentioned Helios One, while Moretti and she were too young to have served at Helios One, she knew Veronica and Smith had been there. All she could think about was her father who had breathed his last breath there and she could feel the buried grief in her resurface. She went a decade without knowing what had happened to her father, not until Uncle Nolan was able to reestablish communications with Lost Hills. Whatever tiny glimmer of hope she had that her father was still alive had been crushed three years ago, once more making the grief from his loss feel raw to her.
"My father died there" was all she stammered out. Attempting to recompose herself, she swept some of the dirt off her coat and looked at the ground in contemplation.
"A few here lost loved ones at Helios One. Some of us were there" Veronica said quietly, clearly uncomfortable at discussing the topic of Helios One. To Anita's understanding, there were many chapters from that part of Veronica's life that she preferred to keep closed, and Helios was one of them. "In the end, we were all just following orders from a mad man. I'm sorry about the losses you experienced and I'm sorry that our leaders were at odds with each other. You were a soldier, you know it goes" she explained apologetically. She looked over him, analyzing his stance and his face.
"That is how war goes" the man said in reluctant agreement with Veronica.
"Out west, the NCR has full control of the Mojave and there is stability there, for the first time in two centuries. Why didn't you go back to that after escaping Denver?" Veronica asked carefully, unfolding her arms, trying to make herself seem at ease.
He paused for a moment before speaking, his soulful brown eyes appearing clouded over with either thoughts or cataracts. "In 2278, news of the Bitter Springs Massacre shattered my faith in the NCR. Of course, being a foolish man, I headed east and was captured by the legion."
Veronica nodded and kept a stony face at his mention of Bitter Springs. "Why stay in this isolated valley? I hear that further east there are vast expanses of farmland free for the taking."
"The good people of the Junction put me in charge five years ago. Keeping four thousand people alive is a struggle, but, we've been able to survive without little outside help for nearly a decade" the man said with pride glinting in his old eyes. He lowered his assault rifle carefully and his posse of four did the same. "If your lot stays on the 70 and keeps away from the Junction, I will call off my snipers" he ordered them calmly while avoiding an answer to Veronica's question.
Veronica nodded hesitantly while Smith peered up towards the foothills that encompassed the valley to see if he could spot out the snipers. "We thank you for your generosity...I didn't catch your name sir."
"You don't need it and I don't need yours" he responded gruffly.
"Either way, we appreciate your generosity" Veronica quipped back, trying not to appear offended at his gruffness.
They all turned around to walk towards the vertibird, grateful that the situation didn't escalate beyond thinly veiled threats.
"One more thing" they heard the man say. Anita and Veronica turned around and focused on him. "To answer your question, veteran, we stay here because out here, the winters send cold straight to our bones and the summers scorch our skin. We perish from disease and the bears hunt us in the mountains. To us, the hardships are worth it, for out here, we have no gods, no masters that will lead us to ruin" he told them as his group started to walk back to the Junction.
After climbing aboard the vertibird, Anita started to think about the implications behind his words: no gods no masters. While she pondered the meaning of that phrase, Josh started the engine and raised the vertibird just high enough that it skimmed over the tips of the scrubby pine trees and yellow-tinged grass. He landed on the diamond-shaped overpass that overlooked the valley that was encompassed by the Junction. Moretti and Josh climbed out to gather some dead tree branches for kindling. Anita opened up the crate of rations and started to divide them out between all six of them.
Chipeta was slowly getting used to eating the bland and starchy rations, although Anita could tell that she still hated eating them as she picked through them slowly with her fork. Chipeta seemed rather quiet tonight; which Anita understood, it's hard to process seeing people talk to each other at gun point when you're a young kid like her.
Anita still remembered the first time she saw two people threatening to shoot each other, they were actually both in the Lost Hills chapter. She was eight when it happened, so many details were unclear at the time, but later she learned that one of the soldiers was defending the disgraced Elder Lyons, along with the aggressions of the NCR. Both of those statements at that time were grounds to getting dismissed from the chapter if you're lucky. If you're unlucky, it was execution. Times like this made her think about her childhood more critically. Things were rough after her father died and her mother was diagnosed with cancer right after; but before that she thought that her childhood was a relatively happy time in her life. Innocence lost, she supposed with a sigh.
"Are you doing okay kid?" Veronica asked Chipeta with concern in her voice. "That man back there was all talk, he wouldn't have done anything bad to us."
Chipeta shook her head yes and continued to pick at her food. She glanced up at Veronica. "What's Helios One?"
Veronica held an uneasy smile on her face. Before she was about to start explaining the events that led up to Helios One, Smith intervened.
"It's okay Veronica, I can explain" Smith assured her. "Back in 2274, our group started to fight with our old enemy, The New California Republic in the Mojave. Our old leader, Elder Elijah, ordered us to defend Helios One, a solar energy plant. In 2276, the NCR started attacking the facility itself and in the process, our leader disappeared and half of my brothers and sisters died" he explained to her while trying to omit the even darker parts of the story behind Helios One that Anita hadn't learned until last year.
"What happened to the leader that disappeared?" she asked, her brown eyes sparkling with curiosity.
Veronica went pale, barely touching her freeze dried chili. "It's hard to say what happened to Elder Elijah. Some say he headed east, into Arizona, some say that he bides his time in the Mojave, waiting for vengeance" she speculated darkly.
"Who does want revenge on? The NCR?"
"Everyone that he thinks did him wrong during his lifetime. He's a complicated man" she explained to Chipeta, her tone evident enough that Elder Elijah was not a subject she wished to delve into any longer.
"Okay then. Is your current leader nice?"
Anita raised her eyebrow at that. Honestly, even though Elder Casdin was the High Elder of the Brotherhood of Steel, some considered her Uncle the true leader. Others, mainly the younger initiates and knights followed the now Sentinel Hardin's leadership ways more closely than either of the elders. Elder Casdin wasn't unkind but he was at best righteous. Uncle Nolan was respected, but she wasn't sure if she would say he was a benevolent leader. He was a desperate Paladin that was thrust into a leadership role that he never wanted minutes after watching his own brother die in front of his eyes.
"It depends on who you ask" Anita stated. "Our leaders focus on maintaining the traditions that were started over two hundred years ago by our founder, Roger Maxson. It sounds harsh, but they're not concerned about how nice they are to us" she explained as uncomplicated as possible. "They respect us if we respect them and follow their orders" she explained, trying to paint the Brotherhood in a positive light for Chipeta.
"Will I be a soldier one day?" she asked, hey face perking up at the thought. "Can I wear power armor like Moretti?"
Moretti laughed. "I like your spirit Chip" he remarked while gulping down water from his canteen.
"You can be a soldier or a scribe like Veronica and I" Anita explained to her. "I'm a historian and Veronica likes to create things."
She looked at Anita after she finally finished her ration. "Do you know about my Mother's people?"
"Chip, who were your mother's people?" Anita inquired. She had assumed that Chip was Latina, just as her own mother was.
Chip's brief explanation of her mother's people was fascinating to Anita. She learned that Chip's father was from a small town in Mexico and her mother was one of the few remaining members of the Ute tribe in Utah. Her mother told her that the story of her people should never be forgotten and that it was up to Chipeta to try to keep the legacy of the Ute people alive. Before the war, their population was dwindling, and after the bombs dropped, they were nearly diminished from raiders. Her ancestors lived on reservations, often in remote areas that were difficult to cultivate through agriculture and the local biomes had been tarnished from generations of poaching and sport-hunting.
After dinner, Anita felt an onslaught of exhaustion hit her while she unfolded her standard-issue cot, which was only marginally better than sleeping on the broken cement. She could have helped Moretti and Smith assemble the tent, but she decided that she wanted to sleep under the stars tonight. She laid on her back and looked to the sky. Few clouds dotted the sky, which gave her a good glimpse of the constellations that dotted the sky. The dipper was the only one which she immediately recognized, she thought that she saw part of the Pegasus constellation. A small shooting star rippled through the sky heading east. Being on the road for weeks on end was brutal, but small moments like these made the stress almost worth it. Currently, she estimated that Delta Squad would arrive at the Citadel during the last week of September, and that they would be there during the first week of October. Delta Squad was passing over Denver tonight or tomorrow and they were expected to relay a report to them soon.
Denver worried her greatly, mainly because Chipeta was in tow. Perhaps she should have found a settlement for Chipeta to adjust to, but the girl seemed to prefer being on the road with them. To which Anita could relate, she felt the same restlessness when her father and the rest of his group had never made it back to Lost Hills. Getting there would be tough, but she hoped that Chipeta would be able to have a safer life in Washington DC. Smith had told Elder Casdin that they had picked up a girl in Green River; apparently the Elder had been displeased, but nobody in Anita's squad would have left her in that dire situation in Green River.
In her eyes, Elder Casdin wasn't a bad person, despite his less than savory actions he had taken over the course of his life. He had grown up sheltered and learned the troubling dogma of the leaders who came before him. The wasteland was mostly foreign territory to him, especially since most of it was under the strict control of the NCR. He followed the ideals of Roger Maxson's son to a t and placed too many of his hopes into Jonathan Maxson and then his young son Arthur that they would bring the western Brotherhood back to their glory days. Situations like Chipeta just were foreign to the Elder, for someone who prized himself on his 'superiority' over the wastelanders, he knew little of the harsh reality of the wastelands.
Based on the small snippets she had heard about Elder Maxson, she knew that both he and the elders before him had started to actively recruit locals. At this point, she was certain that the Brotherhood was in full control of Washington DC, and had made their way up the north eastern coastline. Allegedly, the locals in DC appreciated the Brotherhood's presence, which Anita personally doubted. Yes, they probably appreciated the Potomac being mostly restored to completely potable, but there were so many Brotherhood ideologies with which many of the wastelanders likely took issue.
"Are you spending the night out here?" she heard a voice disrupt her thoughts. She turned to the side and saw Josh standing next to her cot.
"Fresh mountain air is good for the soul" she told him with a smirk, she knew she had read that in some pre-war book in Lost Hills years ago.
"Well, suit yourself then Anita" he teased. "To be fair, I don't blame you, this valley seems unreal to me. I wish that we could spend more time here, the locals hate our guts, but at least the mountains are great" he told her while he smoothed down his uniform. He crouched down beside her cot. "When we finally get to the citadel, are you going to adopt Chip and train her?" he asked quietly.
"I've thought about it a lot lately, I think I should be the one to adopt her. I have a low risk job and I doubt Elder Maxson will have me on many field assignments outside of the Citadel" she said with a twinge of hope.
"I'm hoping I get stationed on the Prydwen, I think I have enough flight experience now as the rest of the lancers, I think they're called over there."
She smiled at him while she turned on her side. "You're not sick of traveling yet?"
"Well…I wouldn't mind being able to sleep on a real mattress at night and eat real food again" he admitted. "Hey, do you remember that thing we talked about?" he whispered.
"Yeah, I do" she whispered back with concern in her voice. "I still don't know what to do about it—Uncle Nolan would be furious if he found out."
"I'm not sure if Elder Casdin is going to do it—to be honest with you Anita, I thought you would have been in the know" he whispered frustratingly. "Smith is staring at us, I should go" he whispered.
"We'll talk about it tomorrow" she whispered back. She rolled onto her back once more and quickly felt sleep come to her, despite the worries that had popped into her mind.
The morning brought a light dew that coated the scrub and trees and the pale sunlight made the dew-covered plants sparkle, as if they were magic. Anita coughed as she woke up, likely from the chill that had set in during the night. In retrospect, she decided that she should have taken Josh's advice after she wrung the moisture out of her blanket. As she did that, she picked up on the stench of her over coat, it really was in need of a good scrubbing, as was her body. Noticing that she was the first one awake, she stripped off her grey night fatigues and waded into the river with a sliver of the standard issue bar soap that vaguely smelled of musk. At the very least, the soap made her smell marginally more presentable.
She tried to not think about what Josh had brought up the night before while she scrubbed herself down with the foaming soap. Josh felt like a wise older brother to her ever since she met him at Hidden Valley; she didn't want to think that he would lie to her about something like that. Trying to put that at the back of her mind, she instead tried to think about what they would see on the road today. They would be passing over a town called Rifle, although it was hard to say if it was still standing because many smaller settlements in this part of Colorado had been razed to the ground by Caesar's Legion during the height of their brutal grip over the southwest.
Trying to ignore the biting cold of the water, she quickly finished rinsing the soap off her body and threw her fatigues back on. Her overcoat could get cleaned tomorrow, she decided. Her watch was still an hour behind, one of those things that she always forgot to change. Adjusting the delicate nob carefully, she got it up to the right time zone once more. She estimated that she would have to do this two more times, once when she reached the Midwest and then the coast.
She meandered back to the vertibird and looked over her trip notes and set up her holotape recorder.
Scribe Anita McNamara here. Today is August 22, 2289. We're leaving the Junction this morning. They were gracious enough to not shoot us on sight; but not enough to let us trade for supplies. Caesar's Legion did a number on this region. Many small villages we've seen thus far have been reduced to scrap. We'll be in Denver soon, we're awaiting word from Paladin Ritchie and the rest of Delta Squad about city conditions. I'm not sure how much ground we will cover today…
Ugh, Anita hated how the recorder made her voice sound nasally and emphasized the Californian accent she didn't even know she had until Moretti had made some sarcastic comment about how she emphasized her vowels. She hoped that nobody would ever listen to any of her recordings, unfortunately, they were meant for the scribes in The Citadel. She decided that she would reattempt a recording later on today. Storm clouds were brewing in the west, which made her arms develop goose bumps. Storms while in the sky were a vastly more terrifying experience than being stuck in one on the ground. Being in a metal vertibird powered by a tiny nuclear reactor was hardly the best place to be if lightning was persisting.
She opened her chest pocket where she stashed her mother's rosary and the locket. When she was young, her mother told her that her father had created this rosary out of scrap metal and an array of beads that he found in the state of Maxson, in true brotherhood style. He apparently had used it to propose to her mother, knowing that Catholicism was important to her.
Her mother taught her a few psalms that she could still recite to this day nearly perfectly. "I lift my eyes up to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth" she recited quietly. She wasn't particularly religious in the pre-war sense, but her morning routine of saying a prayer made her think of her mother and the fleeting memories of peacefulness in her childhood.
After three days, Denver was in sight of them. Seeing Denver reminded Anita that soon she would be leaving the Rocky Mountains behind. When she radioed Uncle Nolan earlier in the morning, the main pack were now two days behind them on foot. At this rate, it would be mid-October before they arrived at the Citadel. Earlier this morning they received a transmission that Paladin Ritchie and his crew were nearing the Colorado-Kansas border and that they had lost Knight Francesco to sniper fire just outside of Denver.
"Should we do any recon in Genesee, maybe try and gauge the situation there?" Anita asked over the vertibird radio. "According to Paladin Ritchie's report, there's two different legion groups fighting in the inner streets of Denver and the eastern neighborhoods along the 70. One of the groups are the remnants of Caesar's Legion from Hoover Dam and the other group calls themselves the Ideal Masters. Well, then there are the Dog Lords and the Yetis too" she informed them.
"Is there anyone there we can root for?" Moretti chimed in over the radio, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
"I think the Yetis are the least of Denver's problems, it's understandable why they're deranged" Veronica added.
"You can't get me to stand within a mile of those walking corpses" Smith remarked. "Pre-war America was barely capable of containing the blue flu, if anyone of us caught it, we would all die."
"Hopefully anyways" Josh responded. "Best course of action would be to back track and do a brief reconnaissance of 119. We don't know how many people could be infected with the blue flu in Denver right now and we can't risk spreading it eastwards" Josh advised.
Anita sighed in frustration. Josh had a good plan, but veering off of 70 could burn through an additional five days' worth of supplies in the main pack by going north into the remains of Loveland and then veering southwards until they were able to reach 70, thus by passing the worst of the warzone of Denver.
"Though I'm worried about supplies, I think that we have to risk a shortage in order to preserve the safety of everyone" Anita decided. "I'll radio Paladin Hardin so he can relay our plan."
"Paladin Hardin, this is Scribe McNamara over" she said into the radio.
"What's the weather like in Denver? Over" Hardin's rough voice responded.
"We're seeking an alternative route, we're turning north onto 119 until we reach Loveland, over."
"You can't do that, over."
"Says who? Over."
"Elder Casdin has already organized two squads to search the airport, over."
"Tell him that there is an outbreak of a unique strain of blue flu in a gang that stays near 70, over."
"He will have the squads follow proper quarantine protocols, over. I advised against it too, Elder Casdin is determined to do a search and sweep of the Denver airport, over."
"I'm not risking my nephew's life for some spare parts, over" Anita radioed, barely concealing her rage at Elder Casdin's decision and slammed the radio back into its cradle. She should have never mentioned that the 70 runs near one of the largest airports in North America. "Foolish old man is going to get us all killed to gather some junk we can't afford to haul east" she shouted angrily into the vertibird radio.
"What's the plan Anita?" Josh asked over the intercom.
"We intercept Elder McNamara's group and tell him our plan" she suggested, she knew her words could be considered treasonous if heard by the wrong ears.
"And risk us getting executed for desertion?" Smith shouted.
Veronica looked eastwards towards the massive towers that dotted the sky. An idea must have popped into her mind. "Josh, how powerful of a radio signal do we need to send a signal that can reach the Citadel?" she asked curiously.