I'm gonna punch Preston in the face when I see him next. Seriously? The folks at Tenpines (it was more like 3 scrubby bushes…not many pines) told me they'd had raider trouble. Not like I'd ever heard that story before in the past few days. They'd overheard one of the guys talking about the Corvega plant nearby so they figured that's where they were based out of.

Well…shit. I mentioned that my dad had worked there back before the war? Yeah…the place was a maze, inside and out. Some of the worst fighting I'd ever seen was the house-to-house shit in Alaska and it was never fun. Every doorway was a potential trap, every catwalk a spot for someone to shoot you from or drop something horrible on you. If they were dug in there, getting them out was not going to be easy. I nodded and smiled and told them that everything would be all right (amazing how many people are comforted by this…) and headed off to scout the place out.

It's amazing what you run into just walking around the countryside. By 'countryside' I mean 'blasted, ruined, radioactive wasteland' but you get the idea. I heard some angry voices from up ahead and, as usual, decided that discretion was the better part of not getting killed. I spotted some rough-looking types (pretty normal these days) having a shouting match with a woman inside a diner. They claimed she owed them money for drugs. She said her boy was strung out on their junk and she wasn't paying them shit. It was looking like it was going to go south when the head of the guy doing the talking exploded. His lady friend turned towards me just as the lady from the diner opened fire on her. That's the trouble with getting caught in the open in a gunfight…you don't know which way to shoot first so you often wind up dying while trying to decide. She found this out the hard way as I stepped from cover and finished what the diner lady had started.

"Is this going to be trouble?" the lady asked as she came out of the diner and leveled her revolver at me. I ignored her and walked over to the two former drug dealers who were getting used to their new occupation of being dead.

"Not from me," I replied as I looted the two on the ground. They had some caps, some chems and a couple of better-than-average weapons so I helped myself before rolling the bodies into a nearby ditch. No point in scaring off potential customers with bodies lying all over the place. By the time I was done she was back at her post inside the diner.

"I can sleep easier at night, knowing that Wolfgang is rotting in Hell," she said as I stepped inside. Her boy was sitting in the corner, hugging his knees and muttering to himself about bugs. "Thanks, stranger. My name's Trudy. What can I do for you?"

"Trading post?" I asked as I looked around. She didn't look like she had much to sell or much money to buy but what the Hell? Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

"All at discount prices, but none of its junk," she said a little defensively.

"I need a place to trade stuff I don't have a use for," I tried the soft opening on this one. Anyone willing to face down a drug dealer and his muscle would not respond well to a hard sell. "You seem to be in a good location here so I figured we could help each other out."

"No chems," she said immediately. "My boy over there has enough trouble without that shit being around."

"Just Stimpaks," I replied, "nothing heavy. And whatever loose stuff I find. Guns and such."

"Mercenary?" she asked pointedly.

"Survivor," I replied easily. Sure, I would kill for money but no sense in getting that kind of rep this early in the game. Might tarnish my otherwise sterling background. Yes…that was a joke.

"I could use a better supply of merchandise," she said as she leaned against the counter and crossed her arms. She trusted me not to shoot her. That was good. "Carla wanders by from time to time but I can't count on her, you know?"

"Carla? Never met her."

"Trashcan Carla, some folks call her," she explained. "She's a bit rough around the edges but junking out in the Commonwealth alone does that. Her prices are fair but you never know what she'll have. One days it's cans of food, which is great, the next it's a dozen typewriters."

"Next time she comes by, send her to Sanctuary Hills," I asked and pointed towards home. Home... now there was a concept I would have to get used to. "If she can set up a regular run from here to there, so much the better for all of us."

"I can do that. You planning on having anything the next few days? My stocks are looking a bit lean"

"I'll likely be back in a couple of days with a pile of guns and armor," I said as I checked her face for a reaction. She wasn't surprised…she'd seen it all before.

"How likely is 'likely'?"

"Well, if you don't see me in three days, send Carla to Sanctuary Hills and tell them I'm not coming back," I said flatly.

"Oh…that kind of likely. I can do that."

I left the Drumlin Diner and headed towards the Corvega plant. There was still a lot of ground to cover and the impending storm would be good for masking my approach. I found a ruined house nearby and skulked into it. The roaches inside were as surprised to see me as I was to see them but, fortunately, roaches don't carry guns…yet. The silencer meant that the sentries outside the plant didn't hear the ruckus and I settled in for a look-see. I was immediately depressed.

The plant was a worst-case scenario for me. Guards all over the place outside plus a turret guarding the front door. They had power because they had searchlights out front and up top as well. The guards looked like the same types that I had seen in Concord. I thought about the Corvega keychain I'd found on one of their guys and understood that this was a bigger outfit than I'd originally thought. It wasn't one gang hitting Preston's people and another raiding Tenpines…it was one big gang with lots of groups working the area. That changed things, but not by much.

A good military operation requires three things: Planning, Execution and Logistics. Planning is exactly what it sounds like…figuring out the objective and how to get the job done. Execution is the business end of things. How to do the job, the hands-on, dirty part that most people avoid. Logistics is everything that makes the other two parts happen. Weapons, food, transport, medical help and all the rest come under the term Logistics and it's every bit as important as the other two. If one of the three parts falls down, your op is fucked…plain and simple.

I was never high enough up the food chain to do much in the way of planning and logistics seemed boring to me. I've always been more of an 'Execution' kind of guy, in every sense of the word. I made my way around the place as best as I could, scoping out the opposition, different ways in and so forth. Any way you sliced it, it was going to be a shitshow. Not even a good shitshow but a bad Rolling Stones cover band on a Tuesday night show.

Kicking open the door on this one was going to get me killed so I spent the day, and most of the night, trying to figure it out. Early in the morning I got an idea and trudged back into Concord. I'd remembered seeing something that made me curious and I wanted to check it out. Sure enough, right about where the Deathclaw (still a cool name…) came out of the ground there was a Municipal Plutonium Well. I peered into the hole the Deathclaw had come out of and it led into the sewer system. Needless to say, the smell was terrible but I slipped on a gas mask and headed down anyway.

I won't bore you with the details but I found what I was looking for. Municipal Plutonium Shafts had been placed all over the country in the half-century before the war and were probably the main reason why there was still power to so many places. The access tunnels to this one included several molerats, a few really old skeletons (likely from workers killed during or shortly after the war) and a gigantic lobster-like critter. Killing this last bit took a well-placed Molotov, several shots to the shell (which were useless) and one lucky shot to the head. I would like to say that this last one was accomplished due to my steely eye, steady hand and years of training but in truth I was aiming center mass and the thing ducked down just as I fired. My bullet and his head had a brief discussion whereupon his head said 'fuck it!' and burst like a melon.

My primary reason for coming down here in the first place was the fusion reactor that was normally located near the well. The idea was that, rather than have a really big power station outside the city, there would be several smaller ones scattered about wherever they found enough nuclear material to power the thing. This scattered the power grid around and made it almost impossible to take out completely because, rather than a single target, an enemy would have to knock out hundreds of small stations. I found the reactor, as well as some generic junk to loot, and pulled the core. Now I could see about the Corvega plant.

I hurried back to Sanctuary Hills, installed the core in the PA suit left over from the museum and smiled when I saw that it was nearly full. I cobbled together what I could (the leg piece from the downed vertibird was a bad fit but I made it work), grabbed what I needed for serious work and headed back. I grabbed a nap before leaving, timing it so I would arrive back at the plant in the middle of the night. Safety tip: Most guards on duty at night begin to get really tired between about 2 and 6 a.m. The body's circadian rhythms are telling you to sleep right about then and staying awake, especially if there's nothing going on, is a chore. I planned to take advantage of this as much as I could.

I parked the PA in the ruined house (since sneaking around in it was like silently approaching in a bulldozer) and began circling the plant. I found a good vantage point on the ruined elevated highway nearby and started shooting. I was not a qualified sniper in the Army but many of my targets were unaware, standing still and silhouetted by the lights behind them. Absolute suicide for a guy with a .708 rifle, a good scope, a silencer and a mean streak. I started at the bottom of the plant, picking off guards as they walked their little patrol areas. Then I gradually worked my way up, taking my time and shooting when they were alone. Another basic tenant of guard duty: Always have a buddy. Not only will they help keep you awake but it's harder to silently kill two guys at a time. Why not start at the top, you might ask? That's easy…I didn't want the blood dripping down on the people below. Gruesome, but true.

I'd cleared the front and was working my way around to the back when I heard shouting. Well, the best laid plans never survive contact with the enemy so I hurried into my secondary position and hunkered down to wait. I was inside one of those mobile huts next to the loading dock when I heard booted feet coming up the concrete stairs from below. I also heard an explosion that rocked the hut and I smiled. Landmines and I were having a great relationship that I planned to continue for some time to come.

I rushed out of the hut and finished off the wounded guy outside before making my way across the loading dock to the catwalk above. What a mess…metal stairs and creaking metal everywhere. Not many places to hide or dodge a bullet and still way too many damned lights. I found a supervisor's terminal, hacked in and shut down the spotlights at least but the rest of the safety lights were on another system. Still way too bright outside for my taste.

I made my way across the skybridge to the larger part of the plant, killing as I went. I got grazed a couple of times but nothing serious and by the time I got inside I counted six dead total. I dropped through a hatch in the corner of the roof and found the inside a lot quieter than the outside. One advantage to the general loss of technology after the war was that very few people had radios to report trouble. Unless someone inside went out, or someone outside came in, nobody in here would know anything.

I made my way downstairs and saw a telltale pool of liquid on the floor. Uh oh…I've seen this movie before. I didn't like the ending the first time. The oily slick seemed to be coming from a fuel tank at the bottom of a flight of stairs and there were a couple of guys milling about nearby. I tossed a can against the wall behind them and slid back into the shadows. Yeah, it was a cheesy ploy, but nobody had seen a movie in two hundred years so it worked. They turned to find the source of the noise and warily moved closer to the corner. That's when I leaned out and put three bullets into the fuel tank. The explosion was LOUD in the confined, concrete space and the mini-mushroom cloud told me that the 'fuel tank' had actually been a fusion power cell for a car. Okay…my bad that time. The force of the blast evaporated the two poor souls standing next to it, bounced my head off the doorframe behind me and caused the Geiger counter in my Pipboy to suddenly go berserk.

I lay there on the catwalk landing, stunned and lying mostly face-down as someone stepped over me to see what was going on. Fortunately, none of these guys understood what a uniform was, or how useful it can be, so they mistook me for one of their own and moved on by. I waited as she descended the staircase slowly and when her head was level with me I shot her with the pistol. The shot was loud, even with the silencer, so I knew I was attracting attention. I moved down the stairs and toward the hall as I heard commotion behind me.

The hallway split in two and I headed down first. I knew that eventually I would reach the bottom and could then start back up. I heard shooting up ahead that, for a change, was not aimed at me. I crept closer as I heard a turret's servos and snarling sounds…then silence. I spied the turret at the end of the concrete hall surrounded by bodies. I managed to get behind the thing without being detected (thank someone for old sensors) and smashed it with a tire iron. The ghouls were scattered everywhere and I moved to one side as I heard voices from behind me.

"I tell ya I heard the turret firing!" one voice said.

"Well if the crawlies got in again there'll be Hell to pay." another replied. To my right I spotted a body, a fresh one I mean, and it looked like he'd let his guard down and the ghouls had gotten to him. He must have slapped the turret on just before he died or there's no way they could have gotten through to him. Fortunately for me, he had some rifle ammo on him (I was running a bit low) and I waited for the voices to draw closer. They must have seen (or smelled) what had gone down and decided against a closer inspection. Lazy guards make my job so much easier! They brushed against the strings of cans as they turned to head back and that was my cue to swing around the corner and open up with my backup pistol. The big .44 roared in the small space and I would be deaf for a few minutes but one shot each put them both down for their dirtnap.

The far side of the room revealed a tunnel that opened into a sewer pipe big enough to stand upright in. That must have been how the ghouls got in. I wanted to use this as a potential way back out and I lamented smashing the turret beyond repair. Oh well…nothing for it now. I moved back up the tunnel, confident that there were no bad guys behind me. Another side room revealed two more goons but they stood close together and a simple run-and-gun took them out. Two more ghouls emerged from a grate in the floor, or tried to anyway, but a shot to the head stilled each of them before they could clear the grate.

This was getting intense and the adrenaline in my veins was making my ears ring. I made my way to the main assembly floor and saw that it was right back to the shitshow. Two turrets stood on top of the office built up above the main assembly level with at least three people walking around. I spotted an old Protectron guard robot still in the recharging station. Nah…no way that thing would still work after all this time. Would it? The charging station was lit up so it had power. I traced the wire back to a terminal near the elevator and gave it a try. I'm not a hacker by any stretch but when the password is 1,2,3,4,5 it can't be that tough to get in. I powered the thing up, turned off the targeting parameters and then moved back to the stairs to watch.

The cover of the charging station slid back noisily and the Protectron stepped out spouting something about law and order. The trio in the elevated office started shooting, the turrets starting shooting and the Protectron started shooting back. In the commotion, I moved to my left and took out one of the turrets with a couple of rifle shots. Everyone was still looking at the robot so I lobbed my last grenade into the office unobserved. The blast knocked one guy over the railing where the Protectron proceeded to crush him with its mechanical claws. One other one had died already and the robot and the remaining turret managed to blow each other up at just the right moment. I raced up the metal ramp and found the bridge to the office retracted. On the other side stood the guy who seemed to be giving the orders. He was bleeding from a nasty head wound and I took advantage of the blood running into his eyes to shoot him before he could raise his weapon. Never fight fair when you're fighting for your life.

I heard voices from the direction I had come and two more raiders came around the corner just as the plant was rocked by a series of explosions. Apparently, the cars in this part of the plant were nearly done so they actually had their fusion reactors in place. The firefight must have touched one off because the shockwaves drove me to my knees and blasted one of the two below into fragments. The other one just managed to dive behind a control panel as the blast hit but it didn't spare her much. I could hear her crying as I picked myself up and staggered back down the stairs to where she lay against the panel. Her leg was twisted into an unnatural angle and one arm was burned down to the bone. She had nerve though because her face twisted into a hateful glare when she saw me. She tried to reach her pistol but the blast had thrown it too far away.

"All this fuss over little old me?" I smirked as I stooped closer. "Sorry love, but in a different set of circumstances I might have joined your side. Instead, here we all are, watching the world burn down."

"Fuck you," she said simply. I could tell that even that much was an effort so I straightened up and shot her in the head as a piece of mercy. No way a Stimpak was going to fix all of that damage anyhow.

I took my time looting the place, dragging everything to the front lobby over several trips. I made a good job of it too since I didn't want to be bothered coming back. Then I went back outside, grabbed the PA suit and came back in for the swag. I figured out how to shut off the turret outside for good measure then emptied its ammo bin. I'd turn it back on when I left and hopefully the menacing whirr of it would keep the place clear for a few days. Just in case, I hung several raider bodies from the railing outside and, with a convenient can of green paint I found in the plant, wrote 'No More!' in letters as tall as I could reach. Maybe this would convince the next batch of assholes to look for greener pastures somewhere else.

Just as before, the PA was most useful as a cargo mule and I fitted up a metal sled to drag away as much loot as I could. The sun was coming up as I headed for the diner. Trudy would shit herself when she saw what I was hauling. Then I could tell the folks at Tenpines/Skinnybush that their troubles were over for now and maybe get them to join Preston's little commune.

The good guys lived…the bad guys died. All in all, a pretty good day.