The next week was a blur of meetings, salvage operations, and rebuilding. Mikhail, Ben, myself, and even Preston regularly met to hammer out the operational protocols of the future Minutemen. The meetings were surprisingly productive, Ben of course took charge of the creation of a training curriculum for prospective recruits, but before he could begin that, first we needed to know what exactly he would be training them for.

There were a few base changes from the old concept that we all agreed upon immediately, surprisingly, even Preston didn't offer much protest to most of the adaptations. The most important was that there had this had to be a solid organization with a centralized chain of command, not the nebulous association of militias that the previous group had been. Preston resisted the total reformation at first, arguing that the ability of individual commanders to make independent commands was necessary due to the spread out nature of the organization, but agreed when we countered that something like Quincy shouldn't have been able to happen, the other colonels shouldn't have had the option of refusing to support Hollis when they could have reasonably done so, a more formalized hierarchy of command could have prevented this.

Another immediate change was that we needed to be proactive rather than just reactive. The way Preston described the old group, they would assault hostile strongholds, but only after said group had been a consistent threat, otherwise they were primarily focused on defending the settlements from attacks as they came. This was an understandable, but stupid strategy. Defense is, without consideration for situational factors, by default the stronger position and it makes sense for a volunteer militia to focus only on defending their homes. The problem with this is that reacting only to attacks is like treating only the symptoms rather than treating the underlying sickness. The better option is to eliminate the hostiles in their bases before they could attack civilians, but this would require a trained and organized fighting force.

This distinction led us to conclude that separating the organization into three separate groups would be best. The first group would resemble the old Minutemen the most, these would be the garrison troops. They would be assigned to a settlement or other location that was under the authority of the Minutemen and hold it against any hostile elements. These would be, in terms of logistics and training, the lowest tier of the armed forces. At some point an element of this group would be dedicated to domestic law enforcement, but that was something to worry about later, when we had laws to enforce.

The next group would be the offensive element, these people would be dedicated to bringing the fight to the enemy's living room. They would assault enemy strongholds and eliminate hostile groups, ideally before these groups could ever become a threat to our interests. These would be the second tier, they would need better weaponry and more advanced training than the garrison troops in accordance with the more dangerous and complicated operations that they would be undertaking.

The third and final group would be the special missions units, the reforged Vympel. These would be handpicked and trained by myself or Mikhail. They would undertake special operations missions, assassination, infiltration, sabotage, psychological warfare, and other tactics in what was once called ungentlemanly warfare. They were tier one, answerable directly to Mikhail and I. Though what wasn't mentioned was the fact that it would be mostly Mikhail, I still hadn't mentioned that I would be leaving after Lexington. Logistically, they were a blank check, to be equipped as needed.

This led to Ben suggesting that establish a two stage training program, to be extended into a three stage program when we had the manpower for it. The best of those who passed the first phase would move on to the second phase to be trained in offensive warfare, while the rest would be garrison troops. This arrangement worked because the offensive troops would need to be able to defend a location as well as assault it. There would inevitably need to be sub-designations, dedicated medics, engineers, the usual specialty trades of any professional fighting force.

While the assault troops were going to be little different than the troops that Ben, Mikhail, and I were familiar with, the garrison forces would need to be different in order to maximize their effectiveness. The key points for these guys would be the ability to fortify a position and hold a perimeter for indefinite amounts of time with minimal supplies, and without putting too fine a point on it, these guys had to be able to be mass produced, minimal training time, minimal supply cost. The assaulters could wait, but we needed a defensive combat force immediately.

The solution to this, surprisingly, was simply to use Revolutionary War era tactics. The idea came from a few of the descriptions Preston gave of his previous engagements. The laser musket that served as the primary weapon for the old Minutemen was ideal for what we had in mind. It was relatively easy to make and source materials for, didn't require ammunition, and was highly accurate while being easy to train with. Once we established this, we ran with the idea of using musketry tactics.

A soldier with a laser musket out in the open didn't stand a chance, even against an untrained force wielding pipe weaponry, the rate of fire was prohibitive. A trained squad behind cover, however, would be devastatingly effective. Building walls out of the materials that we had available would be costly in terms of supplies and the abundant amount of lumber we had access to would probably be unavailable in most cases. One thing that would almost always be available considering where most of the settlements we would be dealing with were located was dirt.

Two feet of dirt is enough to stop most common calibers of bullets, more than enough for the .38 calibers that these raiders seemed to use for the most part. Good old fashioned earthworks, surrounding areas of fire pre-cleared of cover, and a few squads of laser musket wielding marksmen should be enough to repulse almost any assault from raiders, barring those with access to heavy explosives, and any wall would be highly vulnerable to them.

This strategy became even more feasible when Sturges finally unveiled his secret project.

…

"So what exactly is it that he wants to show us?"

We were standing outside the remains of the Wicked Shipping Fleet Lockup, Sturges had called us there to finally tell us what he'd been working on in his every spare moment. "I don't know, I'm more curious as to when he cleared this place out and why he didn't tell us."

Mikhail had his assault rifle slung over his chest, "He took the power suit, we pulled out of the salvage yard, and a shotgun we got from the raiders, two days ago, I thought he just wanted to tinker with them."

"Guess not," Ben gestured to the pile of burnt corpses that I had to assume had been ghouls, the corpses were too emaciated to be human, even after burning. "We might want to rethink putting him on combat rotation, kid can handle himself."

"Too valuable, Sturges is the only reason that Sanctuary is half way up and running." Even Preston didn't know what the hell Sturges was up to.

"Come on guys, it's in the shed." Sturges had finally made his appearance, leaning out the door of the main building.

Without anything else to do, we moved towards the shed, and then we learned Sturges had a showman's side to him. The doors flew open and out came two utility protectrons in front of a gift worthy of Christmas morning.

"Sturges, you chertov genij, you've outdone yourself. How the fuck did you do this?"

In front of us was a forty four ton, ten foot tall, Mega-loader, and it was fucking functional. Sturges popped out of the rusted out cab. "Wasn't all that hard, the reactors still work, least when you put in some new fuel cells to even 'em out, you just need to find to swap out the parts that rusted out. Between the stuff I stripped off the piece in front of the vault, the shit we got from the robo dump, what was already here, and a couple of rolls of duct tape, gettin' this old thing up and running was easy. The cars are harder, their parts aren't as tough"

Fucking perfect.

…

With the Mega-loader operational, power armor frames, and the two utility protectrons, the progress on getting Sanctuary up and running moved forward with leaps and bounds.

We had to reinforce the footbridge with extra lumber, but the power armor made this fairly easy. Once that was done, we brought the Mega-loader across and established dirt walls around the perimeter. Six feet thick, reinforced with lumber, a bullet wasn't getting through. The terrain made maneuvering the loader a bitch though. It would make building earthworks in other locations a breeze though.

The utility protectrons and Codsworth's tool modifications were immensely helpful in fixing up the houses still standing and the power armor made breaking up and clearing the houses that had collapsed.

With Sturges's project done, he was throwing himself completely to setting up the local infrastructure. In one day, he finished a jury rigged satellite jacked into a relatively television that he pulled out of my old house and the terminal that had belonged to Smith, a bit of tweaking and we could bounce the signal off of Olivia to give us a local connection to the network. And within two days we were finally able to bring the transformer up from the Rocket and connect it to the neighborhood power grid, which we were able to splice into the vault's power systems.

The end result was that by the end of the week, we had Sanctuary more or less up and running. Sturges continued to work night and day, usually retreating to his workshop at the Rocket come nightfall. He also continued to go off on salvage operations of his own, usually without informing anyone. Every so often he would just stroll into Sanctuary in a power armor frame he'd found in a train car south of Drumlin Diner, putting our total number of suits to one complete T-45, two frames, and a mishmash of T-45 and 51 parts, hauling a load of whatever salvage he wasn't keeping for himself on the makeshift cart he'd made out of a rusted out car frame. Always with a detailed report of where he'd been, what he'd gathered, and what he'd left.

This was all useful, but there were a few things that still bothered me. At no point had I ever seen him sleep, not odd in itself, but considering his output, there was no logical way he was getting enough sleep for a healthy human being to function. Despite this, my search of the Rocket, Sanctuary, and even the Wicked Shipping Fleet Lockup didn't turn up any drugs, and if he was using, he was highly functional.

Not exactly being a proper friend, but one has to prioritize, if he was functioning at this high of a level, it wasn't a problem that needed to be addressed. Quick note, do not take this as my advice for most drug problems.

One of those priorities was training Asher. In between the meetings and salvage operations, Mikhail and I were putting in at least a few hours a day running him through the necessary skills for special operations.

We had a pretty simple division of curriculum, I handled the abstract parts, such as mission planning and espionage, Mikhail handled the more practical aspects, such as close quarters combat and instinct shooting. Both of us were competent in all of these areas, but our backgrounds made each of us better than the other in certain areas.

Usually Mikhail would work him to the bone and then beat him to a pulp before sending him to me to get patched up and work on his lessons.

…

"Ow."

"Don't be a baby. Put this to your face." I handed him an ice pack

"How exactly am I supposed to beat Mikhail again?" He held the pack to the purplish-yellowish spot that covered the left side of his jaw. With the monocyte breeder, he'd be fully healed by tomorrow.

"You're not, you're supposed to give it your all and make mistakes, then learn from those mistakes, and try again." We were in my old house, sitting around the same table I'd debriefed him at.

"And in the process get my ass kicked. I don't get why I can't use VATS, it's the only way I stand a chance." I'd been teaching him how to use the targeting system, for obvious reasons, he'd taken a pretty quick liking to it.

"Because, tech enhances skill, not replaces it. I didn't get the implants until I was twenty two, Mikhail didn't get them until he was twenty six. You need to be able to operate on your own merits before you can start implementing the tech." This was the most common mistake I'd found among those who got the tech before the training.

"Still, how the hell did he learn how to fight like that?"

I spread a few files out in front of me. "Mikhail had a rather unique upbringing, he's got a military ancestry going as far back as the Varangian Guard, he's had a family member serving with distinction in every armed conflict the Russian Army's been involved in since Peter the Great founded the Russian Empire. His great-great grandfather was a hero of the Russo-Japanese War and World War one. He survived the first Russian Civil War by defecting to the Red's side on the condition that the Romanov's youngest children were spared. Lenin had to allow it, the man was too useful to be killed and too dangerous to be allowed to live as an enemy." I paused and looked up, "How much of what I said are you getting?"

Asher shrugged, "More than I used to, but still not much. What does all of that have to do with Mikhail being able to fight like he does?"

I keep forgetting these people didn't attend any formal schooling. "Long story short, in his family, from the moment a son is born, he's being groomed to be the next Hero of the Soviet Union. If you don't have at least one Order of Lenin before your thirty, you're a disappointment." The blank look on his face told me I still wasn't getting anywhere. "Okay, side note, you're reading up on Russian military history tonight, besides that, do you know what a bear is?"

"I think so, big, hairy, mean, walks on four legs, big teeth, sharp claws. We call them Yao Guai." Monster in mandarin, interesting.

"Think that, make it up to a ton and eight feet long, and you've got the picture. His father used to take him hunting for those when he was a boy." I let a moment pass to help the effect, "with machetes."

That got the appropriate reaction out of him, "holy shit."

"Exactly," I pulled a diagram out of one of the files and laid it in front of him.

"Now, work up an entry plan for this building."

…

Needless to say, his training was moving along rather well.

Now, you've probably noticed that I haven't mentioned Lexington, by no means should you think that it hasn't been on my mind.

Mikhail spread the bodies from Olivia around the edges of the city like candy, sometimes just dumping them in the middle of the street in between raider patrols, sometimes propping them up on street corners, occasionally even impaling them on wooden pikes or pinning them to walls, and on each one was a simple note carved into the flesh of the corpse. Looking forward to our visit, the General is coming, the Reaper sees you, things like that.

We were maintaining a steady psychological pressure campaign, carrying out extensive reconnaissance in depth of the city, the Skyway proved extremely useful in that regard, and even launching a number of pinprick attacks taking out lone sentries or isolated groups. Yet, we were still not getting a reaction.

It was at this point that it became clear that simple reconnaissance wasn't going to cut it here. We needed an inside look at what was going on in their main operations hub, the factory. We needed to get an idea on what the human terrain looked like.

We couldn't send Asher in for the obvious reason that as far as everyone there knew, he was dead or missing and his sudden reappearance after over a week would raise a lot of questions that didn't have any good answers.

The solution to this problem came from a very unexpected place.

In the days since my first visit, Rebecca and I had just sort of gravitated towards one another. Maybe it was the similarities of our experiences, maybe it was the fact that she was the only other woman my age who wasn't a bitch, maybe it was just circumstance. In any case, I found her to be charming, intelligent, and to have a surprising level of insight into the human condition.

I often found myself sharing meals with her and her children in her home, or having her visit my office in the vault for a nightcap and some late night discussion.

Things came to a head one night as I returned to the vault.

…

I despise people sometimes, I truly, truly do.

My day had been a shit show from start to finish. In the first case, a salvage operation to a cabin a little ways off from Sanctuary led to one of those damn bloatflies blowing up in my face, dumping viscera and tiny radioactive larvae all over me. Am I squeamish, no, does that change the fact that it is not pleasant, hell no. Getting back to Sanctuary, after a quick wash and a change of clothes, immediately I had to arbitrate between Preston and Ben duking it out over how we would handle future deployments of our currently nonexistent forces. Important yes, but until we had something, we were basically arguing about the placement of the deck chairs before we figured out how to make the ship float.

Following that was a meeting with Marcy over what we were willing to trade the next time a caravan came through, with Marcy in her usual, delightfully bitch-from-hell, mood. The only activity that had proven even remotely enjoyable was running Asher through my old operations, listening to what he would do and correcting his mistakes.

The long and short of it, my day sucked. My bra was already off by the time the elevator trundled to a stop. My only thoughts as I trudged through the old overseer's escape tunnel to my office were of the glass of scotch I was going to pour myself and of the long hot shower I was going to take before bed.

Then the door to my office slid open and a whole lot of new thoughts.

Rebecca was sitting on my desk, legs crossed, hair down, doing a pretty damn good impression of Lady Godiva.

"Becca… uh… this is a surprise." Not exactly me at my smoothest, but attractive naked women are my weakness.

Rebecca stood up, giving me an even better view, and sashayed over to me, one hand hooking around the back of my neck and the other taking the bra from my hand and tossing it off to the side.

She offered a minxy grin "Here's the deal, you are stressed as hell, and considering you're basically the leader here, that's a bad thing. Not to mention, I'm horny, and from the microfusion cells set to oscillate I found next to your bed, I'm willing to bet you are to."

That brought a flush to my cheeks that hadn't been there in the past two centuries. When I opened my mouth to respond, she immediately hushed me by sticking her finger between my lips and onto my tongue. Her skin tasted surprisingly like honey. "This is purely physical right now, it can get complicated later if we both want it to, but for now, it's just sex."

Her eyes betrayed a mischievous twinkle, "I'm good at my job and I can tell what a person wants in bed. And you, my dear Madison, are an easy one to see, when you're with me, you don't get a say in anything. All you have to do is relax, do as your told, and let me take the lead. Now, pay attention, this is the only time you get to have input on this."

Her finger traced idle circles along the top of my tongue. "If you say no, I get dressed and this never happened, things go on just as they were. If you say yes, then when we're together, you're my toy. And I'm going to take my toy and have a long hot shower with you, clean you inside and out until I feel like you're presentable." Her grin widened, "And then we're going to turn you into a proper whore."

"So, yes or no?"

I am a weak, weak, person.

I nodded.

The next few hours were spent doing a lot of things that one doesn't speak of in polite company, and that I'm certainly not going to speak of to you.

In the pleasurable post-coital haze, our discussion somehow worked around to the problem of Lexington. And specifically the problem of infiltrating the factory and gaining human intelligence, and Becca came up with a rather interesting idea.

"Why don't I do it?"

…

Okay guys, I might add more to this note later, but I'm busy. Today is the day I move to UIS.

I know this is kind of an odd format, but I didn't want this to be another massive infodump chapter, well, more than it already is.

I don't know if I'll be able to update next week, like I said, I'm going to be incredibly busy for a while at least.

R&R people.