Eighty two people trekking across the wasteland, it was quite a sight to see. Their final destination was surprisingly close, not even ten minutes of walking before the Lone Wanderer stopped the group in front of a strange white object; it looked like some kind of undetonated missile but, different.

"So someone have to stay and make sure the rest get through okay" The Wanderer said almost as if he was asking something, something Elliot instantly seemed to get.

"Alright, alright, fine, but only because I don't need to deal with you moping for the next couple of weeks." Elliot sighed.

"Hahaha, and that's why you're my bestest buddy!" The Wanderer giggled like an extremely disturbing child. "Alright gang so we're going to circle around the beacon, don't touch that! Damn scientists, no offence Bigsley, okay groups of ten form around it, no don't hold hands, honestly." As the Wanderer got the first group organised, Jackal couldn't help but notice the green embers that floated around what the Wanderer called the beacon, beacons don't make craters was all Jackal could think as he casually looked around. He was taken by surprise when the Wanderer abruptly grabbed him and put him into the circle next to Pitt. "What, I want to see your faces when we get there" The Wanderer shrugged. The boys looked at each other with a growing sense of anxiety. The Wanderer seemed to be satisfied that he had as many people as he could and strolled up to the beacon. The device sprung to life as the top of the beacon elevated and a mechanic voice echoed out of it.

"Passphrase?" the voice asked in a flat tone, the Wanderer simply smiled and in a tone so low that Jackal could only just make out what he was saying he whispered.

"Take me home." And in those split seconds Jackal became part of the universe.

(Citadel, the Great Hall)

The Great Hall had never been a place of good news, the super mutants, the Outcasts, the Enclave, all of these disasters had been discussed in the Great Hall but now they were faced with a very 'grey' situation. In the months following the war with the Enclave the Lone Wanderer had begun amassing rare weapons and technology, all the while his popularity with the people skyrocketed, and now this, this Wasteland Restoration Movement, the beginnings of an army. The Wanderer had maintained friendly relations with the Brotherhood of Steel and had proved himself to be an honourable if odd man time and time again, but many in the Brotherhood were becoming nervous, how long before the two groups would have to decide who has authority over the wasteland. Some of the soldiers were talking about how his father was responsible for project purity, how many wastelanders see it as the Wanderer's by right, many in the Brotherhood so easily forgot that it was he who drove the Enclave and much of the super mutants into remission. These were the thought of Elder Lyons as he sat at the table of the Great Hall with the rest of the Brotherhood leadership, his daughter Sarah was obviously angry at the suspicion being thrown at the Wanderer, Rothchild just looked as tired as Lyons himself did and Paladin Tristan mirrored the attitude of Sarah, if this was not dealt with delicately another schism could form, tearing the Brotherhood apart, they could not survive another outcast incident.

"I mean has it occurred to anyone that maybe he's not a power hungry maniac? Who's to say he's not forming the WMR because he knows about some threat we haven't detected, it wouldn't be the first time, look at the Pitt for god's sake, that traitor was going to march on us eventually and he stopped it before it even started!" Sarah said with growing impatience.

"Has it ever occurred to you that maybe he's not a saint despite what everybody believes? He wouldn't be the first hero to go bad after getting some power." Rothchild replied in a tired but annoyed tone.

"He saved us, twice! Hell if he wanted power he probably could have taken over the Brotherhood if truly wanted to."

"Oh and then you two could go off and kill behemoths together and live happily ever after Miss Lyons?" Rothchild replied in a mocking tone

"That's complete bullshit! It was nothing like that!" Sarah shouted becoming increasingly flustered

"Oh so it wasn't the Wanderer who killed the behemoth?"

"I-it was him, yes, but that just goes to show that he's not our enemy!"

"Yet"

"Never!" Elder Lyons sighed as there seemed to be no end in sight for this argument, until Gallows walked wordlessly and saluted Sarah and the Elder.

"Sir, I've scouted the WMR just as ordered and, well you may find this hard to believe." Gallows said in his cool even voice. Elder Lyons sat back in his chair and prepared himself.

"Tell us everything."

(Mother ship Zeta, Bridge)

Bigsley was wordless, he had never even dreamed of seeing anything like it, the world, in all of its broken beauty greeted him, the sun so monolithic yet somehow gentle shone through the glass of what appeared to be the command centre of this, this thing that they were on now, a space station? A spaceship perhaps? It wasn't human that he was certain of, no signs of English or any other human language, just holographic pictures that showed each terminal's purpose. Bigsley's thoughts were interrupted by the manic laughing of the Wanderer and to Bigsley's surprise a little girl.

"Hahaha oh my god if only you guys could have seen your faces! Well, welcome home, we haven't found out much but we have discovered the ship's, it's an alien ship by the way, name. As the captain and commander I formally welcome as the new crew of the WMR high command vessel and your new home, the Mother Ship Zeta!" The Lone Wanderer said with a salute and a broad smile. "Now you should meet the first members of this merry little band of misfits" The Wanderer said as put the little girl on his shoulders. "This is little angel is Sally"

"Hello, wow the captain was right you really don't sleep enough, I can see the bags under your eyes from here!" Sally said with astonishment as she stared at Bigsley, who shifted uncomfortably.

"Sally! Use your manners!" The Wanderer admonished in a fatherly tone. Sally sheepishly apologised as she was put down. "Don't mind her, she hasn't had much contact with other humans since she was… taken by the ship's former crew, but she knows more about this ship than anyone else, if it wasn't for her, we'd basically be stuck in the bridge, now we have access to more than half, and believe me that is a considerable amount of space." The Wanderer then directed Bigsley to small side room in the bridge as Sally showed the scientists who were part of the first group the consoles of the bridge. There were three very small corridors decorated with various Japanese scrolls and paintings, in the middle seemed to be another teleportation matrix, but powered down, a man in full samurai armour walked out of the left corridor. He lazily examined the two men, yawned and went back the way he came. "That was Mister Toshiro Kago, yes he is an ancient samurai, don't ask I'll tell you later." The Wanderer sighed and nodded towards the bridge, when they entered and saw the techs already hard at work and the rest of the WMR arriving they wasted no time, there was so much to do.

(Weapons Lab)

Jackal and Pitt were in heaven as far as they were concerned; the ship was the single most amazing thing they had ever seen. The first sight they saw was the earth and both were simply at a loss for words, after an hour of exploration they were even more enamoured with the ship, the technology was weird but awesome; Pitt found an archway that actually healed his cuts and Jackal found some kind of goo that repaired his guns. Unlike everywhere else in the wasteland the ship was actually clean; Jackal had never seen metal shine so brightly. They had spent the last couple of hours in the weapons lab, being taught the basics of using the atomizers and disintegrators, they weren't all that different from energy weapons on earth really, the Wanderer would explain basic repairs to the techs and mercs, and then the techs would use their part of the lab to analyse the tech while the mercs used the shooting range for practice, when the Wanderer was convinced they were all up to standards he gathered them up in a place he called the steam works and their first real mission begun.

(Cryogenics lab)

Elliot didn't much like the cryo lab, besides the fact that his squad died here; there were too many dangerous subjects, supermutants, feral ghouls, raiders and god knows what else. Elliot didn't spend much time in the wasteland but he had seen enough to know that whatever the aliens picked up off there was probably better of being frozen. He addressed his small medical team with a voice of authority.

"Okay, guys we've already gone over basics, now we're going to figure out how to use the cryogenic equipment here for medical purposes, for the love of god don't touch anything I don't tell you to and pay attention." Elliot was in his element here and was far more confident giving his team orders here rather than down there, which is probably why he didn't have any problem slapping the head of one of the medics about to put his hand into cryogenic liquid. "Next time I'm just going to let you do it" he sighed.

(Steam works)

The Wanderer led half of the merc forces through steaming maze of pipes and metal. This was the one place that the Wanderer hated the most, it was hot and uncomfortable, noisy so anything can get the drop on you and it's corridors reminded him too much of the vault. There were still alien corpses about; the new boys seemed to be fascinated by them, the others just seemed disgusted, the Wanderer told them to focus. They were there to kill the remainders of the alien crew; Sally had determined that they managed to stay hidden by continuously moving about through the metal maze. If the aliens got desperate and managed to make it to a critical electronics console, they could shut off life-support, vent sections of the ship or just decide to kill everyone and blow up the ship, there was still far too many electronics that they didn't understand and they could no longer afford the risk. Every once in a while they would happen upon an unfortunate alien and end it quickly; it wasn't until several hours in that they finally discovered the final group. Five alien soldiers sitting near an exposed pipe, warming themselves with the steam. They were a mournful sight; their naturally slim frame was even more petite with malnutrition, the Wanderer felt pity for them but knew that if they were left alone they would make a suicidal push against them. After some silent signals the mercs killed all of them in an ocean of blue light, their deaths were quick, painless and a damn sight more merciful than anything the aliens offered to the human captives. The Wanderer recalled all of the captive's recordings he found and his usual cheery self became more akin to the man who sent out the message to the wasteland, cold, serious and determined to stop things like this from happening again.

"Alright men that should be it, take the rest of the day to get your bunks sorted out and relax, oh and try to have some fun huh? How many opportunities do you get to see a space ship?" The Wanderer said forcing an unconvincing smile, while most of the mercs cleared out, the Wanderer and some mercs began to clear out the bodies.

(Bridge)

Bigsley was truly in paradise, he was in a clean, comfortable environment, surrounded by technology scientists have wet dreams about and he finally had a view in his workspace, and what a view it was! He and five other scientists had been hard at work seeing what could be controlled from the bridge, and the answer was damn near everything! Life-support, death ray, half of cryogenics, all of the robot assembly area and more could be accessed and controlled from the bridge. The bridge wasn't just the command centre, it was the nerve centre of the entire ship; the head scientists must have been the crew for the bridge, from the layout it would seem that they received information from all over the ship, relayed it to the captain, and responded to his orders, they could identify situations and have them remedied in a matter of minutes. Bigsley turned when he saw the Wanderer enter the room and despite himself ran up and hugged him tightly.

"My god, this place is technology heaven! Those closed minded idiots in the Brotherhood couldn't hope to understand half of the things in this room alone. Come on check this out!" Bigsley said eagerly as he pulled the Wanderer to a console. "Okay so you look forward and you see a window right? Wrong! I push this button and it turns into a holographic projector, it's ship-wide as far as we can tell" Bigsley proudly announced as the 3D image of the two very surprised boys jumped up before the captain's chair. Bigsley promptly cut the connection before either boy could make a smart comment. "That's not it, we were able to beam the beacon back aboard the ship, it's in the hanger right now, oh and did you know that we have hundreds of them! We could have teleportation points across the wasteland, hell the world even! We're currently trying to figure out how to fly the small ships but that will take a while, current stock taking put the number of ships at twenty but there was still plenty more, uh what else? Oh of course! Luckily the damage to the robot line was minimal, we can probably have it operational in… a week maybe? Less if we get more people." The Lone Wanderer laughed along with Bigsley as they thought of all the possibilities but the Wanderer quickly calmed Bigsley down.

"Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves, first we have to get everything working , tell me have the techs been able to figure out how long until the orbital death ray is operational?" The Wanderer asked in a serious tone.

"What do you need that for?" Bigsley asked nervously, he loved the technology but he didn't sign up to be part of a dictatorship.

"The guardian robots will be useful in supermutant suppression, but when we identify breeding grounds we'll need to get rid of them permanently, including the one at vault 87." The Wanderer assured Bigsley; he had absolutely no interest in a dictatorship, too many long winded speeches. "Besides how many people are going become raiders when their bases are getting blown up from orbit."

"Well you blew up the generators but there are plenty of spare parts about, I guess they wanted to make sure they could fix them if anything happened to it, if we shift the small ship people onto it we can have it at minimum capacity in about a week also." The Wanderer nodded and sat in the captain's chair, literally staring off into space; things were going to get interesting very soon.

(Citadel)

The Great hall was completely silent. Gallows had explained three times what he had seen, but they still couldn't believe it. Gallows had tracked the Wanderer, Bigsley and all of the successful applicants to a site just north of the power station, after they reached an odd white object they all disintegrated in an orange haze, one group after another, then ten minutes later the object itself became enveloped in a blue light and ascended beyond the clouds, Gallows then investigated the area and just beyond the object site there was a corpse… an alien corpse.

"My god, what does this mean?" Tristan asked

"No, no way, it can't be true, he actually found it" Sarah said almost vacantly

"Found what Sarah?" Lyons asked

"There's an old terminal in the Citadel, with some files on it, he looked through it one time and said one of them talked about an alien crash landing, I told him that it was a mistake but he was certain that there was something out there… that we weren't alone."

"And now he has one of our scribes helping him, or these aliens do god knows what!" Rothchild shouted, he had always had a soft spot for Bigsley but thought that he needed to learn to follow orders, now he may have sent the boy into a horrible fate.

(Living Quarters)

Bigsley couldn't help but giggle as he lay in his bed, the living quarters had very odd stasis pods built for the alien's small frames but under Bigsley's instructions the techs managed to disassemble them and put two together to make it big enough for one person to sleep comfortably, they were still working to make enough but only four or five people had to do with regular mattresses on the floor for that night. He loved his bed, it was soft and clean, more than any bed in the wasteland can boast, but it took too much time to make, he only had twenty five people, he kept five people doing shifts on the bridge always, the sooner they figured that all out the sooner they could figure the rest out easily. He had his own private quarters and already it was filled with half assembled tech; rifles, arch-way components, they had even found food materialisers, pre-war delicacies were lovingly devoured among the crew and more amazing things were still being discovered. But trying to get the robots and death ray operational was going to leave him with no people left; he'll have to pull the weapon's detail just to keep bridge shifts covered. Hopefully they'll be able to get through the week, once the Wanderer makes his little grand entrance people will be begging to join and then they could upgrade from this skeleton crew. Bigsley smiled as he considered the wanderer's first words before entering the ship.

"It's good to be home."

(Fort Independence)

Protector Casdin at his desk looking at the suit of tesla armour he had gotten off of the Wanderer, it had been repainted with the outcast colours and was Casdin's favourite armour. He had been listening to the radio and didn't know what to think about this WRM of his, he had considered of offering him a position in the outcasts but then he joined the Brotherhood for that final Enclave offensive, he simply sighed, in the grand scheme of things it didn't really matter, in a few weeks, nothing in DC will. Casdin's terminal beeped as he received a message, it was short but definite.

Message Received and understood, Brotherhood command sending forces to bring war criminal: Elder Lyons to be brought to justice for complete disregard of the Codex. DC will then be harvested of technology and left.

The real Brotherhood was coming, and the DC was going to be left to fend for itself. It would seem that Lyons was the outcast now.