He'd been here before.
Well, not here exactly. He didn't even know where here was. Nothing about the rows of dilapidated housing looked familiar, and every street looked just like the last.
But he'd been in a similar situation, two years ago. The tense, uncomfortable silence. The nervous fidgeting, the grim, desperate faces.
The strong feeling that all of this was way above his fucking pay grade.
After the Quincy massacre, he'd led an entire group of refugees on a long march North. He was a wide-eyed, inexperienced young recruit back then, trudging across the wasteland with dozens of settlers looking to him for safety and comfort. He'd been terrified of the responsibility on his shoulders, every step of the way.
Two years later, and it felt like nothing had changed. Sure, now he was wearing a suit of power armor with more firepower than his entire unit combined. He'd had two years of combat experience in the wasteland, had faced down supermutants and even Deathclaws without taking a single step back. The future of the Minutemen no longer rested on his shoulders.
But the terror had returned regardless, threatening to paralyze him when his men needed him the most. Why?
The answer came to him almost immediately, or rather, an image popped into his head.
A short, thin woman with long, black hair.
Even two years later, he could still remember the scent of sweat and fear as the two of them breathlessly discussed their insane plan; two years later, he still couldn't tell which one of them had been more afraid. The lone Minuteman backed into a corner, or the Pre-War lawyer that had woken up to an irradiated hellhole.
After watching her clamber into a suit of power armor and mow down a small army of raiders and a Deathclaw, he had decided long ago that it didn't matter.
As long as she was by his side, he'd never feel afraid again.
Preston wasn't the only one affected by the absence of the General. More than one soldier grumbled disconcertedly during their march.
"Listen, I know the General told us to leave her behind, but what if she's injured?" One soldier whispered to the man next to him. "What if her armor malfunctioned? What if ghouls are scratching at her armor right now?"
"She made her choice." Came the trembling reply. "You want to go back there and die with her, be my guest."
The first man recoiled but swallowed the word that was resting on the tip of his tongue. It was a word that was on most of the soldiers' minds, a word that made every step feel like a punch in the gut.
Coward.
No one dared say it out loud, but the weight of it kept their heads down.
Maybe that was why no one saw the ambush coming until it was too late.
A volley of pipe pistols took down four Minutemen almost instantly. Shots plinked off of Preston's armor as he moved to cover, acting as a shield for the vulnerable soldiers behind him. They were unbelievably exposed in the middle of the street; two men fell instantly as the rest huddled behind their leader.
Just a few feet. Preston thought as he charged towards the nearest alley, his armor screaming in protest. Just a few more feet. He prayed, holding back all curses he had for the Commonwealth. His armor was on its last legs, creaking and groaning as he forced it to run.
He managed to take two more steps before his fusion core gave up on him. Preston screamed in frustration as his armor shut down in the middle of the street. Suppressive fire kept his soldiers pinned behind him, fear finally completing its conquest of their pounding hearts.
After nearly a minute of constant fire, during which two more Minutemen were picked off as they tried to dash to cover, the hail of bullets lessened, then stopped altogether. The raiders, who had been whooping and hollering the whole time, grew silent. Somehow, Preston doubted that was a good sign.
A woman stepped out of cover, a cocky grin on her lips as she sauntered towards the remaining Minutemen. Her bright red hair was wrapped in a ponytail, and she cradled a rifle in her arms like a doting mother carrying a newborn.
"Drop your weapons." The woman called. Her voice was soft, almost soothing, entirely at odds with her appearance. As she stepped closer, Preston could just make out the scars that criss-crossed her face.
If he got out of his armor, he'd be executed immediately. Few raiders in the Commonwealth hadn't memorized the appearance of the General's right-hand man.
But considering she hadn't already set them all ablaze with a volley of Molotov cocktails, it seemed like she wanted them alive, atleast for the moment.
"Drop them." She called again, raising her rifle threateningly. This time, the survivors dropped their weapons in a hurry. Some even took the initiative to bundle them up and toss them towards the woman. No longer were they Minutemen; the battle with the ghouls and now this ambush had reminded them of what they really were. Settlers and farmers and traders, not soldiers. The woman whose charisma had managed to convince them otherwise was dead, and their courage had died with her.
The raider boss smiled as she stepped over the soldier's weapons.
"Now, let's talk like civilized people, Madame General." She said, smiling wickedly as she approached Preston's smoking power armor. Behind her, more raiders advanced with their weapons trained on the broken Minutemen.
"You've been quite the annoyance, you know." She ran a hand, almost lovingly, down the side of his helmet. "Does every caravan really need a Minuteman guard? Did the Abernathy farm really need a garrison?"
Two seconds of power. That's all he would need to crush her head. Please?
His armor remained infuriatingly silent.
"Of course, most of what you and your blue rabble do doesn't concern me." The raider shrugged nonchalantly. "Believe it or not, I didn't travel across the Commonwealth for you."
Preston gritted his teeth in frustration when the woman turned her back on him, smiling cruelly at the cowering Minutemen.
"I'm looking for someone, someone important to me." She nodded in Preston's direction. "I heard you've been clearing our Raider bases in the South. Did you clear out the Beantown Brewery?"
Preston kept his mouth shut, but one of the Minutemen blurted out the answer.
"She cleared it out this morning!" he cried, before a raider backhanded him. For a moment, the raider leader's confidence seemed to falter. Preston watched with interest as she quickly caught herself. She smiled again at the group, but it seemed forced.
"I suppose I should thank you for getting rid of that infestation." She spat the last word out. "Tower Tom was a disgusting bastard."
The woman chewed on her lip for a moment before turning to glare at him.
Another slip? Preston could tell she was uncomfortable, nervous even. She might talk a big deal, but it was clear she didn't hold all the cards.
"Did you find a woman called Lily inside?" she asked suddenly, the intensity of her tone betraying the urgency of the question. Preston refused to answer, and the Minutemen exchanged blank stares.
For a moment she hesitated, uncertainty flashing across her face.
"She would have had short, red hair. Blue-green eyes and two scars on her left eye." She added quickly, glowering menacingly at the kneeling Minutemen. When none of them responded, she took a long, deep breath.
"There's a lot of things I could do to you." She whispered, turning back towards Preston.
"Even if I can't get you out of that armor. I could bury your metal ass in the ground. Alive." She shook her head slowly. "Ah but that's no good. You'd keep your stubborn mouth shut until maggots ate away your tongue, wouldn't you?"
"We could roast her alive, boss!" a raider suggested, hefting a Molotov. "That'll get the others to talk."
"If these cowards knew anything, they'd have spilled the beans already." She muttered, sweeping her rifle in front of the Minutemen. "But you, General. You're a tough nut to crack aren't you?" She tapped her cheek thoughtfully.
"Let's play a game, General." She said suddenly, a wicked smile appeared on her scarred face. "I'll kill one of your friends every minute. Once we're done with them, we'll try your idea, Slasher."
Before Preston could speak, she pointed her rifle at one of the Minutemen.
"No plea-" the man's plea was silenced by the crack of a rifle. Preston shook with fury inside his armor as a chorus of jeers drowned out the gasping and sobbing of his men.
"Actually, a minute is a really long time." The raider yawned.
Crack. Another Minuteman fell to the ground, clutching desperately at the gushing wound in her chest.
You bitch. Preston's hand hovered over the eject button. The moment she realized he wasn't the General, he was a dead man. The rest of his militia would be rounded up and sold into slavery or killed. But if he didn't get out, they'd all die anyways.
"Congratulations! I've got an offer for you!" Preston squirmed in a futile attempt to pull away from the approaching raider. She stopped inches away from his suit and peered up at him through the viewports.
"If you come out of the suit on your own, I'll let all your Minutemen go."
Fuck you.
"I'll even let you go." Through the viewports, Preston thought he could see her green eyes glimmering with tears. She was whispering now, her voice on the edge of cracking. "If you're afraid for yourself, if that's why you're not coming out, I promise I'll let you and your men go, unharmed, back to the Castle. I swear on my life." Her lower lip was trembling. If this was an act, it was a really good one.
"Just tell me where she is." Please. She couldn't say that aloud, of course. But it was there, written in her eyes.
She was grasping at straws; everything he'd seen so far confirmed it. Why set up this elaborate ambush here on the off-chance they decided to retreat? Why was she making this offer now, after killing just two Minutemen?
She really was desperate.
This was his chance; all he had to do was point her in a random direction, far away from here.
Oh Lily? Why didn't you say so? Yeah I think I saw her up North, in Deathclaw valley!
Preston smiled at the thought.
Before he could say anything, however, the raider's face hardened. The moment of vulnerability was gone, replaced in an instant with a hard mask of cold stone.
"Coward!" She screamed, spitting maliciously at his helmet. She stepped back, pretending to wipe her mouth while swiping away tears.
"If I find out that you hurt her in any way, I swear I'll feed you your own fingers." She declared to a chorus of whoops and cheers.
"You might have killed a lot of raiders in the past few years, but you've obviously never faced a Tourette."
The second round of cheers was interrupted by a sudden cry of sheer terror.
"Boss!" One of the raiders screamed. Red Tourette spun around to see one of her men squirming in the hands of an X-01 power armor suit. The raiders watched in horror as the pilot squeezed. Hard.
The raider's haunting scream of pain sent a chill of fear down every raider's spine as he was ripped in half, intestines spilling onto the asphalt. Pale, terrified faces turned towards their leader, who was already aiming her rifle.
"Get that thing!" Tourette cried, diving behind a concrete barrier as the raiders began pelting the pilot with .38 bullets. The bullets bounced harmlessly off the armor as the X-01 charged the frontlines. A swift backhand snapped one unfortunate man's neck, and another who was too slow to react was run over in an instant. Bodies flew through the air as the X-01 powered through, sending the remaining raiders scrambling for their lives.
Tourette peeked her head out of cover, using the barrier to steady her rifle as she dumped rounds into the X-01's left arm. Sparks flew, and for a brief moment that X-01 slowed down. The raiders kept up a constant stream of fire, holding the pilot in place. Then, a chorus of swearing and cursing echoed down the lines as they began to reload.
It was all the time in the world for the pilot.
The ground shook as the X-01 charged towards Tourette's hiding place, shrugging off volleys of pistol fire. To her credit, Red Tourette stood her ground, firing off round after round until the X-01 was right on top of her. The pilot grabbed the barrier she was hiding behind and threw it at the nearest group of raiders. They scattered instantly, although two unfortunate raiders with poor reflexes found their insides promptly splattered against the side of a house.
"Fuck this, I'm out!" A raider shrieked, no longer concerned about Tourette hearing him.
When he spun around and ran for his life, most of Tourette's gang followed suit. As terrified as they were of her, even the dumbest raiders in her group had done the calculations. Red Tourette was a goner, and they had no obligation to die with her. A few raiders fell screaming as a hail of red lasers flew their way; the Minutemen survivors had rallied and were furiously chasing down any stragglers.
The few raiders that remained watched in horror as Red stood completely vulnerable before the hulking armored figure.
"You're brave, for a raider." A woman's voice echoed from inside the suit. Red cocked her head.
"Why don't you get out of that suit and show me how the General handles herself?" she asked. She could see her death coming, her only hope now was to go with her pride intact.
"I think I'll stay in here, thank you very much." The General replied coolly, taking a step forward. Red stood in place, calmly emptying her clip into the behemoth as it approached her. As the last bullet left her magazine, she felt the X-01's hands close around her torso. Bones crunched as the hydraulic fingers dug into her flesh; Red Tourette was one of the toughest raiders in the Commonwealth but no human could take that much pain silently. Red's shrill cry of pain was the final straw for the remaining raiders, as they turned and fled full-pelt down the nearest alley.
Thump. Red Tourette fell to the ground heavily, nearly passing out from the pain. With one shaky hand she reached towards her pack. No Stimpak would help her now, but perhaps a dose of Jet or Psycho would take the edge off.
The General watched as Red's hands scratched against the cement in desperation. The X-01's foot came down, and this time Red couldn't even muster up the strength to scream. Muffled sobs and gasps were all she could manage as she stared blankly at her mangled hand.
"You should never have attacked my men." The General spat, heading over to Preston's side. She pulled out and replaced the depleted fusion core and Preston's armor surged back to life.
He'd been smiling non-stop since he'd first spotted her; that smile morphed into an expression of hate when he spotted the panting raider boss on the road. A hot burst of red-hot rage took control of him, and before anyone could stop him, he stepped forward and kicked her viciously. Her head snapped back, slamming against the concrete with a sickening crack, and those bright, green eyes slowly closed shut.
"Think I might have gotten some raider brains on me." The General sighed with mock exasperation, pretending to wipe herself down. Preston chuckled beside her, surveying the carnage.
"I assume Strong is coming by for clean up?" he asked, his voice thick with disapproval.
"Baby steps, Preston. Baby steps. Atleast he mostly eats the dead now." The General lied, turning to glance at the fallen raider boss.
"Is she dead?" Preston asked, unable to keep the hate out of his voice.
"Not yet." She noted, after checking her thermal recognition module. Preston took a step towards her, but the General stopped him.
"Look at her, Preston." She gestured to the blood pooling around the raider's head and the remains of her right hand smeared across the pavement. "Either Strong cooks her up for dinner or she dies in horrible pain. She'll suffer either way."
Preston nodded, swallowing hard. There was a cold, calculated, finality in her voice that sent a chill down his spine. He'd been trying to end the raider's suffering, not prolong it. Despite everything she'd done, no one deserved to die like that. But as usual, every judgement the General passed was absolute, every punishment she handed out was justice.
And he wasn't about to argue in favor of a raider.
"Let's get moving people!" she called, as the Minutemen snapped to attention. "Drag along any raider who can still walk, and make sure to bring our dead with us. Leave the rest behind." She pointed to the nearest soldier.
"Leave your food and water behind for the wounded." She ordered. As the soldiers hurried to comply, Preston swiveled around, searching for a black-haired figure that was mysteriously absent.
"Ma'am, where's Curie?"