Mikhail came to check up on me just as I was finishing my report. At the sight of my PT, he smirked and shook his head. "Always a stickler for protocol, eh Volchitse. It is the end of the world, yet still you write a report."

"It's a good habit to keep, and a necessary one if you we're going to be nation building. Any good combat force needs administration; bureaucracy is a necessary evil." A thought struck me, "Why weren't Preston and Asher in tactical gear?"

That gave Mikhail pause, he brought his hand up and scratched at the stubble that now covered his jaw. "I can't really think of a reason, the thought didn't occur to me at the time that they'd need it."

I turned back to my terminal and started typing again. "I didn't think of it either. We have the materiel, there's no reason we shouldn't have used it. If we had, Asher wouldn't have been wounded nearly as badly. I'm adding that to the report." I looked back up at the Spetsnaz operator, "We made a lot of mistakes on this one."

Mikhail shrugged, "I won't disagree, but we're never short on things we can do better next time. We're both used to working with professionals. It's been a long time since we dealt with amateurs, and in our day, even amateurs knew to ask us for tactical gear if it was available."

I looked at the AutoDoc and offered a noncommittal "Hmmm."

Mikhail leaned against the wall. "More importantly, we'd gotten used to doing the heavy lifting ourselves, this was the first time we brought the locals along for the ride since we pulled them out in Concord. It was bound to be something of a clusterfuck, and all in all, I'd call it a pretty successful clustefuck. You and I weren't wounded, Preston only took a scratch from where one of the bullets winged him, and the kid was going to have to have the surgery eventually if he was going to be Vympel. Not to mention the strategic gains."

I closed my PT and set it aside. He was right, my emotions didn't want to admit it, but he was. "Alright, speaking of those gains, you've been through the system, what did we get?"

In the rush to get Asher stabilized, I hadn't had a chance to go through the network. Mikhail had taken Sturges and Preston back to survey and salvage. "The bad news first, all of the best toys are unavailable. The TOSS system was used up during the initial conflict, Archimedes I and II are both slaved over the Mojave desert. II seems to have been pretty active for the past few years according to telemetry." The Russian snorted, "Someone's been having fun with their toy."

So someone out west had orbital strike capabilities, one of these days I was really going have to schedule a trip to Vegas. Still, more pressing issues. "What about Bradley-Hercules, Highwater-Trousers?"

Mikhail shook his head, "Nope, but those two are a touch more interesting, HT was activated as a self defense measure, and Bradley-Hercules was used twice." He stopped speaking for a full minute.

I arched an eyebrow, realizing he was pausing for drama. "And I'm sensing a but…"

I'm always amazed at how the huge Russian can be so stoic and still have all the showmanship of a ten year old with a dirty magazine. He nodded, "But, and this is where it is interesting, Bradley-Hercules was used twice, but not for the Great War, same for HT, its payload was expended ten years ago. Half on a satellite array just outside of DC, half on Adams Air Force Base."

Adams Air Force Base, famous home base for Air Force One. Goris had mentioned a conflict between the Brotherhood of Steel faction he mentioned and the Enclave. Considering their pretentions, it made complete sense for those pricks to claim that place as their own. I'd have to ask about that later. "Alright, what about the more mundane stuff? The caches, the FORGOTTEN ARMY protocol, that sort of thing."

Miikhail's pragmatic stoicism was back now that the fun topic was done. "The satellite network is fully functional, we have full coverage over the Commonwealth. We can get more, but I don't want to stretch the system until we need it. We're getting signals from power armor all over the Commonwealth, the same goes for the caches."

All power armor suits had a transponder built in that could be activated if the suit had been inactive for more than seventy two hours. The caches were a number of airtight shipping containers buried around the country. Each held either a stockpile of materiel. "I agree, what about FORGOTTEN ARMY, we can probably salvage a lot of equipment from whatever bunkers they hid those guys away in."

There was something odd in his expression, he knew something I didn't. "What exactly do you know about FORGOTTEN ARMY?"

Once again, that was rather odd. "The basic outline mostly, I ran the viability assessment. Slip expendable soldiers with useful skills out of the regular armed forces, wipe the records, and hide them in black sites around the country, in the event of a foreign invasion, an insurgency, or a limited nuclear exchange, you have a readymade and unexpected army to form an insurgency, take down an insurgency, or stabilize the nation, respectively. It was essentially a small scale, short term, clandestine version of Project Safehouse. It was a decent idea from a continuity of government standpoint, so I signed off on it."

"They didn't mention anything about turning them into ghouls?"

I won't lie, that knocked me off guard. "They did what now?"

The Russian dug around in his pocket for his cigarettes, elaborating as he did. "Apparently DARPA had been running experiments, they'd gotten it up to a seventeen percent success rate by the time they ran FORGOTTEN ARMY."

Seventeen percent success rate, two thousand troops were put into that program. Fucking DARPA. "So we're talking about roughly three hundred and forty survivors, probably a lot less at this point."

Mikhail finally found the pack, "Ten actually, at least in the Commonwealth. Apparently there were thirty hidden in the Notch up in Hadley when the bombs dropped. Three went out that day and never came back, seventeen drifted away and left the Commonwealth over the past two centuries, Two are at a ghoul settlement to the east, three are with a mercenary group called the gunners, one is in Goodneighbor, and another four are working as caravan guards, well, three now."

I snatched one of the cigarettes without asking. "And you got this information where?"

He threw me a wolfish grin before offering me a light. "From Marine Gunnery Seargeant Benjamin Warus, the newest addition to our merry band of svolochi. He turned up on the bridge an hour ago."

I took a deep drag of the cigarette, where had I heard that name before. "You wanted to handle the debriefing before telling me."

He lit up his own, speaking around the cigarette, "exactly. I had to make sure that this guy was real, he had the chip, knew the code word, and passed every test I threw at him. The man is a marine."

If my memory was right, and it almost always is, the chip was a simple little device, surgically implanted in each FA soldier's shoulder, its only purpose was to receive a single signal that served as an activation message. Considering the attrition rate, it suddenly made a lot more sense why they didn't go for something more expensive and complicated. "I'll talk to him and review the contingencies myself once I get the chance. After that though, we're getting together to hammer out a basic operational doctrine."

"Shtraf, Shtraf Volchitse, you and your paperwork." Despite the aggravation in his voice, there was amusement in his eyes. He let out a ring of smoke, "Sturges is really stepping up, he raided your candy stash and has Rebecca's son scavenging the neighborhood for odds and ends he can use. He's taking the spare parts from Olivia to cobble together some extra handheld sat radios. And he keeps disappearing off to work on that secret project of his. I don't think he sleeps."

The extra handhelds would be useful, with the network active, our sat phones would work, but we only had a few of those. "Keep an eye on him, he's a good asset and I like the enthusiasm, but I don't want him burning himself out."

He crushed his cigarette against the wall, leaving a black mark and earning a glare from me, eliciting a chuckle from him. "Are you going to wait until after Asher gets out to talk to Ben?"

I nodded, "Probably, why?"

"One of the suits is at the old robot dump, I'm going to take a salvaging team over there and I was planning on having Ben join us."

I waved a dismissive hand, "Go ahead, he's still going to be in surgery for another four hours. Meeting Sergeant Warus isn't an urgent priority."

He nodded, but lingered in the doorway. "You really should get out of this hole Madison, the caravan Ben was with is in town, it could be a solid source for intel."

I looked at him, I didn't want to leave in case something happened with the surgery, highly unlikely with these later models, but not unheard of. Still, Mikhail had a point, the caravan could be useful. "Fine, let's go."

He clapped me on the back and smirked, "Good, by the way, where did you get that tea cup next to your chair?"

Now was my turn to smirk, "You're not cleared for that."

…

Okay, this one was the last chapter tying up the odds and ends of Operation Bloody Mary. The only real purpose of this was to elaborate on the contingencies from the satellite network, I might add a few more as the story goes on that are unavailable now for various reasons, but these are the only ones for now.

I'm really trying to keep on this, I really am, but that Fallout New Vegas Story is calling to me.

Also, while I'm at this, all of you, go check out eaglescorch's "The Lies We Tell Ourselves." If you aren's familiar with eaglescorch's work, he is, in my opinion, one of the best writers on the Archive. If you take anything away from this chapter, let it be checking that out.

Okay, R&R people.