I found Mikhail walking the perimeter with our newfound canine companion, whose name was, oddly enough, Dogmeat. I'd heard the old woman that Jared wanted so badly mention it. Certainly whoever had given him that name lacked the intelligence of their hound.

"So," I said falling into step with them, "what's your assessment?"

Mikhail looked out over the small river, "We can use the scrap from the collapsed houses to build a perimeter wall along the waterfront, we'll need to find more to completely wrap around the neighborhood. We'll still have to scout past the vault to see how much of a priority that will have to be. I'm debating whether or not to put people in the vault until we've got this place properly built up."

I kicked a can over the concrete ledge, "I'm not sure if we want to do that, some of these people aren't exactly stable, and shoving them in a bunker will make them more likely to freak out."

Mikhail nodded, "True, might be best to just keep everyone out here, let them move into the surviving houses. The Longs have taken up residence in the Russell house, Sturges has turned Rosa's old place into his workshop and Preston's bunking with him. Murphy is in the Whitfield's, and since everything other than my bunker has collapsed, I'm crashing at Jahani's. I've told them all that your place is off limits."

"Thank you," Dogmeat whined between us, I stopped, dropped to a knee, and scratched behind his ears, "Guess he forgot about you, huh? Don't worry, you can bunk with me Dogmeat." He barked appreciatively and glared at Mikhail.

The Russian held up his hands, "Comrade, I figured you could handle yourself."

Dogmeat barked skeptically, his tone making it clear he was calling bullshit. Amazing how quickly one can learn the social mannerisms of a hyper-intelligent German Shepherd.

I laughed, then in a quieter voice, "What's your read on these people?"

Mikhail eyed their old neighborhood, their new base of operations. "The Longs are definitely a risk factor, more specifically Marcy, Jun is more likely to harm himself than others. Murphy is either crazy or psychic, or both, and I'm not ruling any of those out considering our present circumstances, but she seems harmless. Preston and Sturges are both solid as far as I can tell, though Sturges might be pushing himself too hard, he hasn't slept since we arrived, and Preston has a look in his eye when he talks to me, he's either attracted to me, or has some kind of grand plans."

I smirked, "Could be both."

Mikhail shook his head, "Not again, if this turns out like Iceland, I'm blaming you."

Dogmeat eyed us both, I patted him on the back, "Story for another time boy."

"What did you get from your defector Volchitse?" He drew his rifle and aimed at a copse of trees across the creek.

"We've got three major opposition forces in the immediate AO, there's a small group of four of five at Walden Pond, a force of at least fifteen are holed up in the old Air Force sat station, and the group from Lexington that we met in Concord, subtracting the guys we took out in Concord, we're looking at about fifty to sixty hostiles."

Mikhail took his shot and one of those giant flies dropped on the opposite bank. "Walden Pond will be the easiest to deal with. The sat station will probably have some hardware we can salvage. And Lexington is the greatest threat, which do you want to handle first?"

The nagging thought in the back of my mind managed its way to the surface. I let out a sigh and sat down, dangling my legs over the ledge, "What are we doing Mikhail?"

Mikhail sat down next to me and Dogmeat laid his head on my hip, "What do you mean?"

A two headed deer strolled across the opposite bank. At this point, it didn't even phase me. "I mean, what's our long term goal here? I've got to find out what happened to Shaun, but say I manage that, what's next?"

For the two of us, long term planning was the norm. That was the whole premise of special operations, small actions that added up to large goals, which added up to one even larger goal. For most of our careers, those goals had been to influence regional events with the long term goal of promoting the general welfare of our respective nations. Now, the primary goal was gone, our respective nations were gone, so what was left?

What was all of this for?

Mikhail set his rifle to his side and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. "Short term, we get the essentials secured, food, water, shelter, electricity." He smacked the pack, dislodging a couple of the cancer sticks, and offered me one.

I took it, "Already had that thought out, but I asked what your idea is for long term?"

The two headed deer dipped its head into the irradiated water to drink. Mikhail took out a lighter out of his suit and lit his cigarette, taking a long puff of it. "Nation building."

I held out my own cigarette for him to light, he obliged. "You're kidding me."

He shook his head, "Madison, I don't have anything left, if nothing else, I'm a solider, I need a mission."

I took a puff myself, "A whole lot of building before we can call it a nation again."

"We've done it before, in Mexico, in Belarus, hell, we're probably the only ones left qualified for this sort of work." He blew out a cloud of smoke, "Have to go forward to go back."

The deer looked up at us curiously, or one of its heads did at least, the other was looking at something off towards the bridge. "I get what you mean." If we wanted our society back, we were going to have to drag it up kicking and screaming. And that was a goal I could get behind

Mikhail looked at his pipboy, he'd swapped the one he'd salvaged from the vault for his old Vympel issued one, really just an Activity issue in Vympel camo. He flicked his cigarette away, "Come on, Preston'll be expecting us." He grabbed his rifle and stood up.

I tossed my cigarette and stood to follow with Dogmeat in tow. The roads were still dirty and cracked, but the worst of the debris and detritus had been cleared away. Marcy Long was lighting a cooking fire under the Russel's carport, she sent me a glare as we passed.

Soon enough I'd have to find out what exactly her problem was. She seemed pissed at the world, but she also seemed to be honing in on me. Murphy had found a broom and was sweeping out her new house, I really didn't get why they called her mama, as far as I knew, none of them were related. The only one that was possibly related to her was Sturges. There was probably a story behind it, but I didn't feel like hunting it down yet.

Preston was waiting for us, he and Sturges were looking at a crudely drawn diagram on an old dining room table.

Sturges was explaining his plans to Preston, "If we dig right about here," He pointed to a spot on the diagram, "We should be able to splice the wires between the vault and the old power grid to the houses. That's where the vault's external power distributors run closest to the grid."

Preston nodded to us as we entered, but looked skeptical, "Are you sure we can do that? That we won't just end up blowing ourselves to hell."

Sturges shook his head, "Nah, they apocalypse-proofed these old things, they'll outlast all of us."

I laughed at that, I had to. Sturges and Preston looked at me oddly. "Sorry," I said, "It's just that that's exactly how they advertised these places." I gestured at our surroundings, "The communities of tomorrow, designed to survive anything, a home that will be waiting for you when you leave the Vault."

That must have come out more bitter than I meant it, because Mikhail was the only one who laughed, a sarcastic snort. Preston and Sturges just looked slightly uncomfortable. There was an awkward silence, until Sturges broke it. "But yeah, there's only one problem, the grid itself is fine, but some of the wires in the houses themselves have decayed and need to be replaced, we could just swap out the decayed wires with the salvageable stuff we can pull out of the collapsed houses, but it'd be safer and we'd have a lot more options if we could find a transformer to plug into the grid and run all the power through that." He marked a spot on the map and drew lines from it to all of the little squares that represented the houses. "If we strip powerlines, then we should be able to install a direct connection to each house and anything else we need to power."

Mikhail nodded, "I agree, but instead of putting the transformer at the connection point, why not connect it at a more central point, right here," he pointed to a spot that I recognized as the house adjacent to this one. "The house is collapsed, but we could still use its connection to the grid. It'll be easier to connect and more defensible."

"Yeah, good idea," Sturges rubbed his chin thoughtfully, "but where are we gonna get the transformer."

This one I knew, "Under the Red Rocket Truck Stop, just down the road."

Mikhail threw a questioning glance my way, "How do you know that?"

I shrugged, "I was bored one day, decided to people watch while they worked on Nate's Atomic. Saw one of the attendants try to sneak off to the cave down the hill, so I tailed him and found their little dumping scheme." I turned back to Sturges, "They have a ton of stuff down there; it's going to take a lot to move it though, also, the seals on their barrels have probably degraded by now, so it's probably pretty radioactive down there."

There was something in Sturges's smile that made me worry, "I'll pop some Rad-X before I go down there, as for the size, once we get it out of the cave, I've got an idea. I won't say anything yet, but if it works, it'll make things a whole lot easier." Sturges slipped his thumbs in his belt loops, looking pleased with himself.

Preston seemed content to ignore Sturges's troublingly unknown grand plan, so I decided not to question things yet. Preston moved on, "We've got the water situation covered, and we can get the beds out of the vault, so we've got shelter to sleep in. Sturges is handling the power situation, as you just heard. So our next priority has to be food."

Mikhail nodded in agreement, "How did the meeting with the Abernathys go?"

I got the feeling I had missed a meeting, "Someone catch me up on this one."

Preston took up the explanation, "The Abernathys have a farm close by, and more importantly a huge amount of food stored up. The caravaneers down in Quincy used to mention them, so I ran over there while you were asleep. They're sympathetic, but they want our help before they're willing to throw in with us."

Of course they did, "And what do our new friends want?"

"They want us to deal with the raiders harassing them."

Well at least that was in line with our goals. "Are they based at a pond, a sat station, or are they from Lexington?"

That caught him off guard, "Apparently they're at a satellite dish a ways to the east, how did you know?"

Mikhail answered for me, "Her little defector told her."

"Don't call him that."

Preston seemed to take that as a cue to open up the topic. "Speaking of him, we need to talk about what we're going to do with the prisoner."

This would be a fun topic, I kept my tone even. "He's not a prisoner."

"Well, he was a part of the group that killed a lot of our people, and some of our people want justice."

I'd expected this, "By some people, I'm assuming you mean the Longs."

Preston looked pensive, but nodded. "Marcy wants to hang him."

I leveled him with a nuclear glare, to his credit, he didn't flinch… much. "Marcy's not going to get what she wants. I understand that time has passed and things are different now, but we aren't going to execute a kid not even old enough to drive, especially when he's turned to our side."

The Minuteman was walking on eggshells, and he knew it. "How do we know he's not faking it?"

Mikhail chose this moment to put his two cents in. "Preston, I know Madison, if she says he's turned, he's turned." He adjusted the strap of his weapon, reminding everyone he was the only one in the room who was armed. "And I happen to agree with her outlook, if he had caught a bullet in the fight, that would be one thing. But killing a boy now, just to satisfy a call for blood, isn't justice, it's murder."

Preston seemed to consider this, and agreed, "You're right, we need to be better than that. But still, what are we going to do with him?"

"Leave that to Mikhail and I." I eyed Mikhail, we'd talk about it later. "Now we work out our situation."

I detached the projector piece and tossed it in the air. The antigrav systems kicked in and the eye opened up, staring down at the table. A few taps on my pipboy and a 3D projection of the Commonwealth was projected from the floating device. It wasn't entirely accurate, the satellite filled in details it couldn't see with archived data, so some of the buildings that had likely been destroyed were shown as entirely whole.

With a few manipulations of the touchscreen on my pipboy, I focused the map on the northwest portion. "We're here," I marked Sanctuary Hills on the map, dropping the hills for simplicity's sake, covering it in green. "We have confirmed hostiles here, here, and here." I marked the pond, the sat station, and the factory on the map, covering each in red. "We have unconfirmed hostiles in these locations." The major raider group strongholds that Asher had mentioned were highlighted in yellow.

Preston pointed to a spot on the map, a high voltage tower close to sanctuary. "That's where the Abernathy farm is." He pointed to another spot, a small structure nestled near the edge of a cliff. "That's Tenpines Bluff, Molly and Rick have a small farm there, I used to bump into them at Bunker Hill." I marked both in green and zoomed the map out, back to the Commonwealth as a whole. I knew where Bunker Hill was, though I was assuming he meant the memorial on Breed's Hill.

"What's at Bunker Hill?" I zoomed in on that, revealing a number of small structures spread out around the monolith.

"It's the main place to trade in the Commonwealth, all the caravans base themselves out of there. Most of the small farmers take their stuff there to trade to. A whole lot of caps run through that place."

I labelled it in green, "Caps, as in bottle caps?"

"Yeah," Preston looked at me like I was stupid for a second, before remembering who he was talking to. "They're, I guess they're kind of like the dollars you guys used to use."

Bottle caps as currency, another oddity for the list. Still, money was money, and where there was money, there was intel. I filed that knowledge away for later, it could help find Shaun. "Anywhere else we should be familiar with?"

Preston pointed to Fenway park, and I zoomed in on it. Apparently, it too had been repurposed, judging by how densely packed the former field was. It even contained a reservoir. "That's Diamond City, biggest city in the Commonwealth." I followed the routine and marked it as green.

That added to the list of places I needed to investigate. Still, I kept quiet as Preston indicated another area, a walled off section of the financial district. "That's Goodneighbor, basically, if you can't make it in Diamond City, on the caravans, or settling in the outskirts, you end up there or with the raiders."

That, I was familiar with, Mikhail picked up on the same idea. "So it's a slum, a ghetto, a place where people go to be on the fringes of society, but not quite outside of it. A place to get disreputable things."

"Yeah," there was contempt in Preston's voice. That didn't surprise me, Preston seemed like the boy scout type. The 'If you aren't contributing to the cause, you're part of the problem' type. My guess, he wouldn't spend five minutes in a place like Goodneighbor if he wasn't ordered to. Asher had mentioned spending time there; I'd have to ask him later.

Still, places like that attracted a certain breed of people, whores, thieves, drug dealers, and thugs. The kind of people who would kidnap an infant from his father's arms and blow the man's brains out for resisting. Another place on my list of places to start hunting. "Okay, is there anywhere else we need to be aware of."

Preston shook his head, "None right now, there are a few settlements down south that I know about, but those are too far away to get in touch with right now."

Alright, between Asher and Preston, I felt like I had a fair approximation of what we were dealing with. "Okay, I know I'm not in charge, but here's my recommendation for our agenda going forward." I moved the map back to the northwest overview. "According to my asset, Walden Pond is the residence of five or so raiders led by a man under the name Bear. They're the smallest threat, but also the easiest to eliminate. I can gear up, head out tonight, liquidate them, and be back before dawn."

Mikhail nodded, "I agree, kill the rats in their hole before they come to bite us."

Preston eyed me warily, "Are you sure you can handle those raiders on your own?"

A smug smile slipped across my face, "Honey, Mikhail and I took out twice that many before I got my hands on that T-45. These guys don't stand a chance." It was arrogant, but some bravado was required. Sometimes you had to push it through a person's head that, yes, you were a professional.

Mikhail ignored Preston's doubt and my rebuttal, "I'll run recon on the sat station, see how fortified the place is."

"Preston, we're going to need support before we move on Lexington. Tenpines Bluff wouldn't be a bad place to start." It wasn't exactly high priority, but getting it out of the way now wasn't a terrible idea.

"Agreed." Good, I wasn't in the mood to argue.

Sturges decided to remind us all he was in the room. "Guess that means I'm holding down the home front."

Our roles established, it was time to get back to work.

And thank god for that.

…

Hey guys, good news, bad news time. Good news, I'm one class away from earning my associate's, then its off to U of I for bachelor's. Bad news, that class is an ungodly horrible math class that I'm terrible at, hence its eating up a bunch of my time, so updates might get a bit spotty in the future.

If anyone's good at Hamiltonian ciruits and nearest-neighbor algorithms, drop me a line, I could use the help.

Either way, once again, very expositiony, but that's the only real way that I can introduce Madison to the CW. Next chapter, we get back to the action, and a bit of a treat for any longtime fallout fans, the grand return of one of my favorite characters. Can anyone guess who it will be?

R&R people.