?, Valentine's Day 2290, 9:01pm
"... Ughhh... " A captured Brotherhood soldier groggily looked around, finding himself in a dark room with barely any light. He tried moving his arms only to find them bound to the chair he's strapped to.
"Who's there? I-identify yourself!"
"Knight Damien Lane? A woman's voice inquired.
"H-how do you know me?"
"I get around. Now... " Suddenly a single bright light source appeared directly in front of his face, causing him to jerk his head to the side. "I need you to answer some questions for me. How's that sound to you?"
"Who... are you?"
"Ouch. You really don't remember?" She said in an aggressive tone, causing the knight to flinch.
"You're gonna tell me how to get into Raven Rock."
"Hah. Fuck- GAHHH!" The knight suddenly recoiled as a fist flew across his jaw, drawing blood by knocking a tooth out in the process.
"Make this quick, yeah? I'm pretty busy."
"Y-you really think-" The man spit on the ground. "You really think... you can force something out of me? I know where my loyalty lies."
The woman's silhouette appeared and stepped herself in front of the light, staring daggers through the captured man's eyes.
"No, I don't think you do."
The knight's eyes acclimatized to the darkness. He saw only an empty room and the silhouette of his interrogator; the aforementioned woman clad head to toe in black armor and a mask.
"You're a man of principle. I can see that much. It's why you joined the Brotherhood."
Suddenly the man heard the fuzzy noise of a holotape being played.
"Is this thing recording? Hellowwww? Try it, sweetie."
"Hi daddy!"
"No... " The man said to himself silently.
"Now, why keep this on your person? Isn't this something you hide in your footlocker? I was nice enough to handle this with care, though so don't worry."
"Don't. Fucking. Touch. My family." The man said with every ounce of silent rage he had.
"Relax. I'm not a piece of shit. I'm not gonna stoop that low. I do wonder though... " The tape continued to play:
"Anyway, hey honey! I'm not sure how long you'll be gone. You're never clear with these things! But I'm sure clearing the wasteland of bad guys and doing all your hero work doesn't leave a lot of time on the table. Come back soon, though. I love you! Say bye to daddy, baby!"
"Byebye!"
The man seemed visibly shaken up by what he had just listened to, particularly to the sound of the child. Abby coughed and started pacing around him.
"That holotape was dated 2285. A whopping five years with the Brotherhood, huh? All those years and all that effort... was worth fuck all."
"What are you getting at?"
"All those years under Maxson and he couldn't complete his goal. Hardly even made a dent in the super mutant numbers. I still see ghouls running around and about too, hell, radscorpions were a thing until the Minutemen of all people rounded them up in droves. Maybe I can chalk that up to there not being enough time, but in a couple of years, the NEA's accomplished things only dreamed of two-hundred years ago. For all the East Coast Chapter's power, you couldn't do jack shit. So the Brotherhood really has gone to shit after all."
"And whose fault was that? Pretenders in the Commonwealth that's who!"
"Actually, it's yours."
The woman's answer got a violent reaction out of the man, causing him to lunge forward but fall over due to his compromised position on the chair.
"Have you ever stopped to consider why the Prydwen got blown up? Maybe it was because other people knew you were wrong-"
"DON'T GIVE ME THAT SHIT- AUGHH"
The man felt a slam against his chest, cracking a rib.
"Like I said, this isn't torture. If I was, I'd be hurting you to get something out. Right now, you're just pissing me off. Anyway, where was I? Ah, yeah. All that time chasing down super mutants and ghouls, hunting and hoarding pre-war tech. What about raider massacres? Gunners and other mercenaries picking on the little people out there? Your priorities are those of a blind bigot. I don't think I need to tell you but, your wife really had the wrong idea about all of this."
"Leave her out of this."
Sensing a sore spot, Abby leaned into his weakness.
"She thinks you're off saving the wasteland and its people. She probably didn't know that you were out hiding in some second-hand bunker; twiddling your thumbs waiting for your next orders to gun up some abominations. So much for coming back home to your lovely family."
"Shut up... "
"If you really did love them, you would have gone to them as soon as the Brotherhood crumbled. You didn't though, and I know why."
The man remained silent, extremely averse to eye contact.
"You didn't go back… because you were afraid of having to raise your child."
The silence only confirmed Abby's reads of the man, if only partially.
"That face you made when you heard your daughter's voice; that wasn't the look of longing. It was a look of complete regret."
The man was now slightly shaking.
"That shouldn't have stopped you though, she's your wife, right? She of all people would understand. Maybe you weren't thinking clearly when you were making your daughter. Maybe you had second thoughts; pretty shitty if you ask me but absolutely NO ONE is stopping you from making the choice to admit you wanna leave. But for someone like you, the only thing stopping you was your patheticness. Do you really love your wife?"
"Of course I d-do."
"So why join the Brotherhood and leave her behind?"
The man paused for a few seconds.
"To make this country safer... " His voice was weak.
"So a family man and a man of virtue, huh? You failed miserably at both."
"Go to hell."
SMACK! Abby backhanded the man in his face, causing his cheek to swell and bruise.
"And you failed because you are a goddamn fraud. A man who gets hitched only to leave his wife for some sort of purpose is someone who is searching for an excuse; an excuse to not take responsibility. You probably didn't want a child but your wife did. Instead of talking it out with her, you let it happen because you were afraid of how much you depended on her for your happiness; you didn't wanna offend her. So now that you were unsatisfied, you had to go searching for an excuse to leave and you found that in Maxson's Brotherhood; an organization that uses the preservation of technology to rationalize their extreme prejudice against things they hardly understand. In other words, a fraud like yourself. I'm sure you saw through Maxson's bullshit, self-conscious and selfish as you are, but anything was better than living in your disappointment. Now that your excuse is in shambles, so is your life; no love, no purpose... all because you were so scared of disappointing your wife... And now... you have nothing ."
The man never looked up to meet Abby's eyes. His silence further confirmed the truth behind her verbal and emotional assaults.
"It's no wonder no one has bothered to negotiate to bring you back... "
"...what?" The man said, his voice noticeably quivering.
"It's been a month... Don't tell me you've lost track of time? It's why I was shocked to hear you didn't remember who I was."
The man gasped and looked down again in shock. Abby was lying of course, but with his doubt and self-loathing sowed, he had started losing his grip on his judgement. At that point, nothing seemed to matter that much anymore. All the lies he buried away were now presented.
"N-no..."
"You reap what you sow. Your half-hearted commitment was duly noted. They were just looking for recruits to fill their dwindling numbers, holding on to a belief they were in denial about losing. You're not worth the effort."
The man started to weep, losing all sense of shame. His breaths got shallower and quicker while he couldn't even wipe the tears from his own face.
"Earlier I called you a 'man of principle'. I still hold onto that; you're a man of your principle. In other words, you truly are the lowest kind of scum..."
Tenpenny Tower, February 17, 2290. 6:30pm
It'd been three days since the Brotherhood garrison holed itself up in The Enclave's old headquarters, and there was no sign of them coming out anytime soon. This caused some complications in the timeline.
Handy sat at Allistair's old desk. The residents of the tower were friendly enough, but it wasn't like they had a choice. Every bit of weaponry that wasn't the NEA's was confiscated and the special forces of both the Institute and the Minutemen went to work barring the doors and building barricades in the lobby. The luxurious interior was done away with and no commoner roamed the halls of the tower.
But up in the penthouse, Handy pored over a paper map. He had access to a digital one, complete with updates of troop positions, but he preferred to create his plans on a medium he had been exposed to during his twenty years of military service. Updates from the north at Raven Rock were consistent, as the signal trucks parked on the outskirts of the Capital Wasteland provided a signal by which to send information at great distances with only about a half an hour of delay (Institute wartime frequencies were a lot weaker but nigh-impossible to intercept), but nothing changed. The northern flank had not moved, even with hostilities at Raven Rock reported to have ceased.
Handy checked his Pip-Boy map, nothing had changed indeed. He turned it off and looked back at the paper map before him. The strategy he had formed was to have the regular troops relay from Commonwealth City and storm the garrisons in the north, while The Director and NEA special forces used the distraction to cut the Brotherhood line at Andale, marching then to take the ever-advantageous Tenpenny Tower while the Brotherhood lagged a step behind.
Tenpenny Tower would then serve as the stronghold and a constant threat to The Citadel as the regulars in the north swept southeastward to an eventual siege of the Brotherhood HQ, at which point would contain a dwindling and demoralized enemy.
Except the northern flank wasn't moving. According to his intel, there was one entrance in and out of Raven Rock, Elder Lyons herself provided a detailed account. Of course, Handy ordered that as little damage as possible be done to the location so it could serve their cause, but he was rapidly reconsidering that notion. Brig. General Garvery assured him that The Brotherhood was working towards a "diplomatic" approach and that the extra troops who've held out valiantly for days inside the bunker could potentially be useful allies, but Handy wasn't clearing out farms and estates of uncoordinated ghouls or unsuspecting raiders in the disorganized Commonwealth, no. He was conducting war with a powerful and organized enemy, an enemy who knew the land, who knew the people, who hoarded weapons and armor far superior to any wastelander.
This was the first hitch in the plan, but where the rest of the Directorate might see a delay in results, Handy, as a military man, never discounted the possibility of total annihilation. Even with far greater numbers, better weapons, non-human soldiers that could be thrown at the enemy in the hundreds, and far superior technology, he never let overconfidence cloud him. The U.S Army did just that when they invaded China, and while the U.S finally got the edge with the introduction of power armor (power armor Handy himself wore), they were eventually forced to pull out of the region. A complete waste.
The Director wondered if he had fallen into the same trap that a sense of superiority had laid for his country more than two-hundred years ago.
In more recent times, Handy and the Institute expanded the territory of the NEA with tactics unknown to modern man. They set up shop in Far Harbor, Maine and slowly relayed hundreds of troops, scientists, and builders to clear the way for the founding of Vitruvius City right in the heart of the state. The city's infrastructure was built in a matter of months thanks to all the scrap and decrepit old buildings that were stripped down and sent to steelworks back in Commonwealth City, which in turn returned Institute-grade building materials to the colony-building effort. As Vitruvius was built and the local nuclear reactor reactivated, more NEA troops flooded in, and eventually, a state-wide pinscher campaign was launched on New Hampshire from Maine and Massachusetts. With Vitruvius City in Maine and the newer Solar City in New Hampshire, splinters sent to plunder Vermont, Conneticut, and Rhode Island reunited regions of the New England Commonwealth, and as the local people were attracted to building new lives with the Institute's attractive living conditions, the NEA grew in resources and manpower. But despite all the rapid expansion in the space of a year, with a satellite array launched that would allow anyone to relay around the continent and send short-range transmissions, improved weapon technology, and improved everyday inventions like working vehicles and the new touch-screen technology, the Institute's appetite kept growing as quickly as it was being satisfied and Handy was having a harder and harder time of keeping the more conservative Directorate members in order.
Handy reached into his pocket and pulled out a couple of multi-colored plastic coins he had pulled from an old arcade he couldn't remember. He kept tokens that represented the different sections of his military in his person for times like this, when he had the time to interact with a map.
He placed a blue coin on Tenpenny Tower, representing his flank, and two brown and white tokens representing the regular army in the north. Handy checked his Pip-Boy once more to gain confirmation and placed a single yellow coin on the northern front. He then placed two white coins stacked on each other on the very edge of the map, in between the two fronts. He then placed red coins in various locations that represented the Brotherhood of Steel. It was crude intel that they had gathered on them, but Handy had faith in his Courser scouts to be sure of the enemy's position in the south. Still, the center of the map was a question mark. Perhaps the enemy would be more fortified in a particular area than The Citadel. Like Raven bloody rock, Handy cursed to himself.
X6-88 walked into the room cold as ever with a simple announcement: "Sir, we've spotted a Brotherhood platoon heading this way from Andale."
Handy moved a red coin between Andale and Tenpenny on his map. "Thank you X6, have the men downstairs been notified?"
"Yes, sir."
"Very good," Handy said as he got up to go to the balconies. He always wanted to see enemy movements for himself whenever he got the chance. He passed Allistair Tenpenny's head out on the high porch, serving as a warning to anyone who ever thought of scouting out the heights of the tower, and proceeded to his Director's Guard, one of whom was staring down the sights of Mr. Tenpenny's signature rifle mounted on the ledge for stability.
The synth moved out of the way and handed Handy the rifle, and true enough, he saw a Brotherhood platoon marching towards the tower. "They're either dumber than I thought or know something I don't," Handy mused.
The Director pulled the trigger and handed the rifle back. "That's one we won't have to deal with. X6, X4. with me, the rest of you stay up here and pick them off. If we can delay their advance and engagement to the dead of night, that puts us at an advantage."
"Yes, sir."
The Coursers reached for some more long range rifles leaning neatly on a nearby wall, brought along as part of the Coursers' operating packages, as Handy walked back into the tower towards the elevator.
Lobby.
The elevator dinged and revealed the sharp-looking Director, in his full dress as usual, flanked by his two guards. Immediately, Handy went to work, inspecting the barricades in the lobby.
"Soldier," Handy called to one of the spec-ops stationed nearby. "Please instruct the synths to straighten these here barricades facing the doors, that'll slow the advance as much as possible- remember! If they reach that elevator our entire position is compromised, we must make them navigate a maze before they do."
"Yes sir!"
The two saluted each other and Handy turned to another man on site. "You there, please make sure the soldiers are properly garrisoned to guard the underground access, a large steel door is a tough obstacle but we cannot discount our enemy."
"Yes sir."
"X6 will you please ask the status on the civilian floor?"
X6 brought a finger to his ear and chattered for a bit before responding. "All residents accounted for on the 8th floor, sir. The guard is substantial for their safety."
"Good. They seem orderly enough; but just in case, assign a Courser to the 8th floor when the fighting begins."
"Yes sir." X6 spoke into his earpiece once more as they now ventured to the courtyard.
Handy travelled straight to the main gate outside and turned around to view the choke-point from an invader's point of view, seeing that it was good.
"Very good, ladies, gentlemen, synths. Windows?!"
Handy walked backwards to outside the gate to view the synths stationed in some of the rooms, assigned to rain fire from the windows. "Huh... just as we anticipated."
"Indeed, sir," X6 affirmed. Their heads perked upwards even further at the sound of a sniper rifle firing from the balcony. "And that should dictate the terms in our favor further, everything seems right." Handy said casually before going back into his makeshift fortress.
February 18, 2290, 1:42am.
"Something isn't right... "
"Sir?"
Handy was in the lobby with the rest of his guard and the stationed NEA troops, guns pointed vigilantly at the door.
"Nothing, not even a blip. The snipers can't get clear shots, and the troops at the windows haven't reported anything - they've gone dark... "
"What do you suggest, sir?"
The troops in the lobby sort of turned their heads to face the Director as he stood, arms crossed and fiddling with his mustache in apparent thought.
"X6, call the guard."
X6 put his hand up, but before he could speak he received an additional order: "And prepare my power armor. We're moving out."
X6 didn't quite like the idea of the Director jeopardizing himself, but he did as he was ordered and relayed those orders through his earpiece. But then something unexpected happened: the sound of gunfire started peppering the air.
Everyone in the room assumed a ready stance, but Handy looked pleasantly surprised, even flashing a smile. "Haha! Belay those orders X6, I'm suiting up myself."
X6 phoned the orders in and followed Handy into the elevator. "I shall return soon, soldiers," the latter addressed his troops. "In the meantime, Godspeed New England!"
"Godspeed New England!" The troops echoed with a vigor that wiped every shred of lethargy from their visages. They were ready for a fight.
Outside, the Brotherhood laid in full tilt towards the tower in a chivalric charge. They found a good enough spot to hide from the sniper-fire, but they lost around ten of their number purely due to Courser marksmanship. Some intel the Brotherhood gathered pointed to advanced stealth technology, and the head of the Brotherhood front, Paladin Casdin was simply itching to get his hands on it. He was no fool though, he fancied the NEA would grow paranoid and employ those stealth agents in the open, at which point he would order a forward march to punish the overextension and advance to rear with the stealth tech in their hands.
But no stealth agent came, and there was no point in retreating now. If they tried to wait the garrisoned invaders into the open, they would go hungry, and there was plenty of food and supplies in Tenpenny to keep their enemy watered. If they turned back, they would have lost life for nothing.
The lack of action was enough to convince Casdin that his enemy was sleeping comfortably in their beds; what greeted him was a hail of gunfire from an enemy that didn't sleep.
"Get this fucking gate open!" The Brotherhood braced tight against the thick stone walls surrounding the courtyard to try mitigating the effect of incoming fire. Some shots managed to sneak through but at least their number stopped falling.
The elevator in the lobby opened once more, and Handy walked back through it, a foot taller and enshrouded in white steel. On his chest was emblazoned the proud seal of the NEA.
"Let them come, let them come!" Handy shouted to further fan the flames in his troops' hearts as they heard a loud boom outside followed by gunfire a lot closer to them; The Brotherhood had broken through the gate and the NEA troops made a shooting gallery of them.
"Status," X6 said through his earpiece. A moment passed. "Understood."
"Report," Handy commanded.
"The Brotherhood has taken down the gate and crossbeams and are flooding into the courtyard, we're holding at the wings and the windows have resumed fire."
"They can't hide an entire platoon under the porch, order them to hold position until a stalemate occurs."
"Yes sir."
"Be ready soldiers, we might have a chance to end this early." Handy picked up his one-of-a-kind Institute rifle from one of his Courser guards, a weapon Advanced Systems called "Experiment 18-B." He inspected the rifle and readied it towards the door, it seemed some eager Brotherhood soldiers were already knocking...
Paladin Casdin wanted to funnel inside the hotel to escape the rain from the windows and hopefully turn the tide on the surprisingly tough wings of the NEA. He personally rammed himself against the doors along with two other power armored men of his.
"Ready! HooWAH!" The Paladin and his knights shouted.
Inside, the NEA soldiers got into the rhythm themselves, observing as the door accumulated more cracks and the hinges began to give way.
Sensing the door was going to give way at any moment, Handy let fly with another shout: "Godspeed!"
"New England!"
The Brotherhood broke down the door and lasers and bullets rewarded their efforts. Handy walked forward and absorbed the Brotherhood's fire, but that put him at an angle to allow Experiment 18-B to simply vomit her payload into everything opposite her.
"Don't break! Keep pushing in!" The Paladin commanded although attempting to move through an established line of fire proved difficult, even for Brotherhood soldiers in full power armor.
"Keep the pressure on!" Handy shouted, picking out the soldiers that he could aim for. And 18-B didn't just pick them off with a ratatat , no it sounded more like a brrrk with its ungodly rate of fire. The Brotherhood had made a fatal mistake in attempting a frontal assault, and it was now that they realized it and began to rout.
Handy reloaded a new fusion cell into his rifle and led a counter-attack. "Charge, charge, charge!" The opposing Brotherhood members panicked as they realized they could either stay and die or run and just risk dying. Paladin Casdin had fallen, the first to do so, in fact, and Handy made a point of reminding The Brotherhood of it as he stepped on his corpse for leverage to steady his fire.
Up and out The Brotherhood ran, and when the outer flank saw their comrades running, they themselves turned about and began to retreat.
"Advancing," every synth that recognized the retreat maneuver (and that was just about everyone) began to give chase themselves. The barrage from the windows never relented and The Brotherhood realized that their foes did not concern themselves with prisoners. They were out to cause as much damage as they could, they were here to remove whoever stood in their way.
Handy knew if they took prisoners it would serve as an impetus to further assault the tower, and while they could fend off a couple more waves, it wouldn't take long before The Brotherhood found a way to outmaneuver or eventually outnumber them, chopping the NEA's grip on the southern sector.
Handy put up his hand to halt the ground troops once they reached the gate. He learned from experience that one must never chase an enemy to the point of putting them on an equal battlefield. They fired at the visible units and only stopped when the wasteland lay black and empty before them. There was no cheering, no confirmation, nothing.
Then some commotion was heard from the lobby: "Godspeed New England! Godspeed New England!"
Those outside followed suit, and those in the windows. Man, woman, and synth united their cries and gave their retreating enemy a final parting gift.