Chapter 5

About two months after the events of the previous chapter, and all the men were remarking about Col. Autumn again. Only two months had gone by, and he was back in his office, studying prewar books and making plans. The world had gotten back to work around them, the Midwestern Brotherhood had simply ignored them, and everything was good. Research on the GECK was going extremely well, and they were on the verge of a breakthrough, though said breakthrough had not come yet. The world was peaceful, some believed too peaceful, but all was fine for now.

Andrew had been promoted one rank, he was now a First Lieutenant. Eleanor was almost completely finished with her research into the radiation resistant plant project, and the X-03 power armor suit was almost into production. The base had recently finished putting more radiation shielding on the buildings, and this led to higher morale overall with less radiation to fear. The world looked better and brighter, the Vault Dwellers were happy trading with the Enclave and being given protection. Too bad little is ever as simple or good as it looks, and if it is, it rarely stays that way for long.

Autumn had always been the kind of person who worked well in the military; he was smart, strong, able to kill, but most of all he was a good leader. Good leaders always seem to be hard at work, and Autumn was no exception. As usual, Autumn had a new task for Andrew and his squad, but this was on an entirely new level, this time he was going to be asking them to go into the Texas commonwealth. Texas had a few things that would be of advantage to both the Enclave and BoS could really use, for example, only a few prewar vehicles remained in pristine condition, or even intact, and most of these precious few were in Texas. Another good technology that was in Texas was Anti Radiation Material Suit (ARMS) project and the Synthetic Oil Project (SOP) whose company had a branch of research working on more advanced anti radiation projects and synthetic oil and fuel. Regardless of what was there, they had to think of the journey to get there, which was basically just a race between the Enclave and BoS troops. It was fairly dangerous, so the entire project was a volunteer based project. Of course the goal (at least for the Enclave) was to establish an enclave for themselves in Texas, but the plan was much more complicated than this, and would start with just three people.

Three people would fist be sent to figure out sites to inhabit as near to the Nextek testing plant (Nextek was the prewar company that was developing and testing ARMS and working on synthetic oil and fuel) as possible. Those same three people, would have to locate a fair radiation shelter, though there were far less rads in Texas then many other places but because of spreading fallout there would inevitably be some. Those three people would clean out the area of hostile and live in it for a short while to clean it up and make it into a usable base, after which the main team would be brought in via vertibird. The main group would get the technology they needed and send a small crew to bring it back. The vehicles they needed to restore would then be airlifted using two modified vertibirds to the main base, and all this had to be done in less than a month. Andrew, Thomas, and pilot William Harrison would be the first three men to board the vertibird. Harrison was fairly old—a little over 68, but he was a perfectly good pilot, physically fit, and a good aim with a laser pistol, all things that were required of the third member.

Gerald Henderson walked toward The Citadel, the main base of the Eastern Brotherhood of Steel. He met some of his best friends in the briefing room; Sarah Lyons, star paladin Cross, head scribe Rothschild, and paladin Bael and got ready for the briefing. Gerald listened to elder Owyn Lyons give his presentation, they would be headed to the Texas commonwealth. The plan was to capture the technology using as much force as necessary to get access to the Nextek testing plant, and use the Brotherhood's new supply of vertibirds to bring back as much material from the plant as possible, and bring back the 40 men they would use on the march. The leaders of this hopefully quick escapade would be Sarah and Gerald, who were the best fitting leadership that the Brotherhood could find.

Sarah was pushing for even more brute force for the plan, but she settled for the one presented, even though it would take probably more than a month to complete, and Gerald had a few problems with the plan taking him away from his life. "I didn't expect to be shipped out west to recover antiquated technology from an old factory for Christmas" was the first comment from Gerald, who had no idea of exactly what was actually happening, none of them did. A short while later, Sarah and Gerald were talking in privacy about their takes on the plan presented by Elder Lyons, they both thought it was open to many mistakes and threats during the march, but that it would do. Paladin Bael managed to get out of this, deciding to guard the gate instead.

Gerald walked out to Megaton, his adopted hometown in the wasteland, he was thinking about his father, he had seen him frozen in the Enclave's hole in the dirt, Raven rock, hinting that he may have been alive. He wrestled with the fact that he had blown up his possibly very alive dad. He didn't give a thought to the many Enclave soldiers he had killed in the blast, to him they had been on the boat with those evil goons, so all of them had been nothing higher to him than yao guai he had all but exterminated, in fact they were lower. He finally decided that he was just torturing himself and went to pet Dogmeat, at least he was willing to listen, "unlike certain paladins who guard gates" he thought to himself. Gerald was content just petting Dogmeat and listening to the dog pant.

John "Hannibal" Smith (commonly known as "the courier" by folks in the future) was fiddling with Ed-e, his personal eyebot companion as he sat down on the side of the road. He had been through a lot lately, but he was happy, it was one of those times when you feel at home, glad to be alive. He was just listening to Big Iron on Black Mountain Radio, just as the song ended he heard a new sound come out of Ed-e, a broadcast like the Brotherhood and Ulysses had used, not a recording. It was an SOS message, "Any units in the area please respond, we are under assault by enemy forces, coordinates west of 36.0161° N, 114.7377° W." Hannibal decided to go join in the fight, the only people in the area west of hoover dam would be Ceaser's Legion, who was more of an enemy to him than the scare stories he heard when he was young.

He and Ed-e arrived at the destination just in time to witness a massive battle between Ceaser's Legion and men in advanced power armor, he naturally fought the Legion. The battle was ugly, as battles tend to be, 10 Enclave soldiers had died and the help of one good soldier helped the Enclave soldiers quite a bit, they finally beat back the Legion, leaving the rest fleeing back to their camp. Searching the leader, they found that he was Ego interficiam te, one of the Legion's better leaders. Colonel Ethan Summers thanked Hannibal and asked him if he would join the Enclave remnants, Hannibal asked for time to think it over, and he decided to join them after a few days.

Hannibal heard the plans around camp, they were going to be heading west to Raven rock, one of the presidential bunkers. A few days into the journey, they got contacted via Ed-e and told to come to Chicago, that Raven rock was gone. So the Enclave started walking to Chicago, and the journey was begun. The Brotherhood was getting practice time on super mutants for the journey. The East coast Enclave were getting ready to start trading with Vault 64, and leave for Texas. The west coast Enclave were headed towards Chicago to join forces with the east coast Enclave. Hannibal was fit, content, and ready for the journey ahead, he had packed all his belongings and was ready to head east. Far to the south, another group was awakening, and they would soon become another big faction, ready to fight to defend the freedom they had formed for themselves, and force Ceaser's Legion from their lands.