Nate looked at his Pip-boy's display in complete disbelief. It was showing him that it had picked up a military radio signal, the kind of broadcast he had previously expected to never hear again. He was close to College Square now, but the distress call coming from the nearby police station in Cambridge piqued his interest, and so he decided to make a brief detour. Whoever this "Brotherhood of Steel" was, they certainly sounded like they needed help – and maybe if he helped them, they could reciprocate the gesture.

At this point, he would welcome any help he could get. The directions he had received from Ellie at Valentine's Detective Agency had been frustratingly vague and imprecise and would only get him so far unless he could find some follow-up clues. The more pairs of eyes he had on this, the better.

The sight that greeted him as he approached the police station was like nothing he had ever seen before. Laser rifle fire rang out loudly from behind substantial barricades as swarms of skeletal metal beings converged on the building, squawking binary-code messages to each other as they strode across the sparking remains of their fellow robots. They seemed far more advanced than the average protectron, fast and agile as they ducked between the sizzling bolts of energy and returned fire with their own boxy, cumbersome weapons, seemingly oblivious to anything except what was in front of them.

Nate's time on the Alaskan front line had taught him that that kind of tunnel vision was a very bad idea, even for an enemy with such an obvious numerical advantage. Bracing his rifle against his shoulder, he opened fire on the nearest metal automaton, hitting it squarely in its temple and blowing its head to pieces, its decapitated body crumpling into a heap of circuits and gears. As it did so, another of the monstrosities noticed its comrade had fallen and turned its unblinking gaze towards him, swinging its cumbersome weapon around to open fire. Nate fired a quick burst into its knee, ripping its leg off and causing it to drop its gun as it fell. Undeterred by the loss of its limb, it began clawing its way towards him, digging its fingers into the cracked asphalt and blaring a warning of his imminent destruction. Nate simply put another bullet through its head to finish it off. He continued his advance, ducking and covering when he could until he was within touching distance of the barricade's side entrance, and he passed through it to find the people within.

He was surprised to see that one of them was a man in a full suit of T-60 power armour, while the other two were dressed in what looked like military uniforms, although the emblems adorning their gear were unfamiliar. Deciding to put his curiosity aside for the moment, Nate instead stood shoulder to shoulder with the man in the power armour, spraying the phalanx of artificial beings with sustained bursts from his rifle until every last one of them lay in pieces on the ground. When the gunfire had ceased, the armoured man did a brief inspection of the battlefield, stamping casually on the heads of any enemy that was still moving, even just a little. When he was satisfied his task was complete, he turned back to Nate and said "We appreciate the assistance, civilian, but what's your business here?"

"I heard your distress call," Nate said simply. "You sounded like you needed help, so I came to help."

The armoured man pulled his mouth into a thin line for a moment. "Purely out of the goodness of your heart? I find that difficult to believe."

"I'm a soldier," Nate replied, shrugging briefly. "Soldiers need to stick together." He gestured to the insignia on the front of the man's suit. "I don't recognise this symbol, though. Who are you people?"

"I suppose I owe you an explanation at least," the man said, "especially after you helped us out with these synths." He paused before placing a mailed hand on his chestplate. "Paladin Danse, Brotherhood of Steel. Over there are Knight Rhys and Scribe Haylen." Then he pointed to a crumpled, headless corpse on the gantry of one of the barricades. "Up those stairs is what's left of Knight Keane. There were more of us, but they were picked off by ferals and these damn robots shortly after we arrived in this godforsaken wasteland."

Nate felt a pang of sympathy, which overrode his confusion at the rank titles Danse had used. "I'm sorry," he said sincerely. "Never gets easier, does it?"

"No, it doesn't," Danse began, "but everyone who signs up for a long-range recon mission like this knows what they're getting into. My men died carrying out their orders to the letter, and if you're really what you say you are, you should understand that the best way to honour that sacrifice is to complete our objective and return home. I'll make sure their names are recorded in the Brotherhood's list of honoured dead when we return to the Capital Wasteland – but first I need to make a call to HQ to ask for reinforcements, and to do that, we need to recover some pre-war tech from the Arcjet Systems facility to the west of here. Normally Rhys would be backing me up, but as you can see, he won't be ready for active duty for a while yet." Rhys began to protest vigorously, but Danse cut him off mid-sentence. "Don't argue with me, Knight. You're not going anywhere until Haylen says you can. Understood?"

Rhys looked aggrieved for a moment before he nodded stiffly, grunting in pain as he did so. "Understood, sir."

"Good," Danse said before he turned back towards Nate. "Since you helped us with those synths, I'm hoping you can assist me in finding that tech." He paused. "I can pay you a small amount of caps, if that helps make up your mind—so what do you say, soldier? Are you willing to lend the Brotherhood of Steel a hand?"

"Absolutely," Nate said, without a moment's hesitation. "Let's get moving."

A whisper of a smile crossed Danse's scarred face. "Outstanding," he said, before donning his helmet and then reloading his laser rifle with a fresh energy cell. "Follow me."

A few irate molerats and a couple of wild dogs looking for an easy meal broke up the relatively short hike to Arcjet Systems, but otherwise there were no problems preventing Danse and Nate from getting where they needed to go. As the two of them approached the front entrance, Danse abruptly held his hand up and balled his fist. "Let's get one thing straight," he began, his voice stern. "When we get in there, no matter what happens, you follow my orders, you watch your fire, and you absolutely do not try to be a hero. I don't want to have to bury anyone else on this mission."

"Wasn't planning on doing anything else," Nate said with a brief shrug. "Let's get what we came for and get out."

"Agreed. I don't want to spend any more time here than I have to," Danse replied, before briefly touching the building's door-release mechanism. It did not respond, even after half a dozen taps, so Danse snorted in annoyance and swiftly kicked the doors off their moorings with one of his heavy armoured boots, sending their splintered remains flying all the way into the back wall of the entrance foyer. He must have seen Nate's surprise on his face, because he immediately said "Simple problems require simple solutions, wouldn't you say?"

"I guess so," Nate said. "Lead the way, Paladin."

The interior of the building was just as run-down as its exterior, with wall panels hanging off their fastenings and frayed wires poking through the gaps, stray sparks skittering outwards like strands of cobwebs. Clumps of ceiling tiles were scattered all over the floor, and piles of garbage were heaped against the walls, with several light fixtures still intermittently sparking to life. It suddenly occurred to Nate that General Atomics' commercials proclaiming its fusion cores to be the future of power generation before the war had turned out to be true after all.

There really was a first time for everything, it seemed.

As the two men approached the stairwell at the rear of the room, Nate could hear the vague whirrings of what sounded like robotic limbs and garbled squawks of binary code. He was about to say something before Danse cut him off. "I heard it too," the armoured man said, as quietly as his helmet's speaker would allow. "Be ready."

They rounded a corner, Nate fully expecting to be greeted by another phalanx of synths—only to discover that the noises were coming from a crumpled protectron, one of its legs convulsing noisily back and forth as it lay face-down on the bare floor, surrounded by the shattered husks of several other robots. Danse snorted in what almost sounded like disappointment before stomping a hole in the robot's head and causing its twitching and chattering to finally end, not even bothering to waste a laser bolt on it. "Look at this mess," he said. "These robots weren't destroyed randomly – this was a targeted assault."

"Is this the Brotherhood of Steel's handiwork?" Nate asked, curious.

"I highly doubt it," Danse replied simply. "We would have been a lot more efficient." He pointed to some coarse scorch marks on the walls. "Besides, these laser burns are from Institute weapons, not Brotherhood ones."

"How can you tell?"

"Institute weapons leave behind a unique energy signature," Danse explained. "It's invisible to the naked eye, but my power armour's sensors are fine-tuned for detecting this kind of thing." He shrugged, his suit's bulky shoulder-pads clanking loudly. "It's a personal modification, not standard issue. I find it helps with reconnaissance missions like this." Hefting his rifle in both metal gauntlets, he nodded towards the room's inner door. "Shall we?"

The trip down was mundane, with only a few defence turrets offering up sporadic resistance. Danse did most of the work clearing them out, their laser bolts splashing harmlessly against his armour for only a few moments before he eliminated them. As they reached the bottom of the basement and emerged onto a metal gantry, Nate was stunned to see a large rocket engine suspended from the ceiling. Across the room was an elevator, which appeared to have no power. Nate cursed loudly before he noticed another door off to the side next to a viewing window, emblazoned with warning signs about live electricity. Glancing at Danse, he said "You thinking what I'm thinking?"

"I suspect so," Danse replied. "You see if you can get the power back online. I'll investigate the elevator – maybe I can jury-rig it to run off my armour's fusion core if you can't activate it from there."

"You can do that?" Nate asked, surprised.

"Power's power, isn't it?" Danse said. "I have spare fusion cores so I won't be caught short if it actually works." He took a few steps towards the elevator before a single synth dropped to the ground in front of the elevator doorway. Visibly annoyed, Danse shot it in the face and reduced it to ash—and then another landed next to it, and then another, and another, a tide of leering metal and plastic automata bristling with heavy weapons. As they began advancing slowly and methodically on the two men, Danse turned towards Nate and jabbed a finger towards the doorway. "Go! Get that elevator powered up!" he hissed urgently. "I'll hold them off."

"But –"

"Do it!" Danse yelled, firing a volley of laser bolts at the synths before charging towards them, bellowing with sharply-focused rage. Nate hesitated for a few seconds before he turned on his heel and ran towards the control area. Within it, he found a bank of consoles and the terminal which would allow them to get out and back up to the office level. He proceeded to override the terminal's minimal security and felt the hum of power reverberate through the room, and then began to head back out to aid Danse in fighting off the synth horde before he noticed a large red button on the console adjacent to the viewing window. It was labelled with a warning about it being linked to the engine hanging from the ceiling, and that gave Nate an idea. An incredibly risky idea, sure, but one that would pay off for both him and Danse if it worked—but if it didn't, at least he and Danse would die going down swinging.

Here goes nothing…

He slapped the button and heard the engine begin to warm up, a bright blue glow emanating from the exhaust before it bloomed into a fiery blast that seared every last synth into a melted heap of scrap and left Danse collapsed onto one knee. When Nate was sure the heat from the engine had died down, he rushed to the Paladin's side. "You okay in there, Danse?" he asked urgently.

"I'll manage," Danse grunted, picking his rifle up and pushing himself to his feet. "Brotherhood power armour can take higher temperatures than that."

The elevator ride up led to what seemed to be some kind of control centre, filled with a small squad of synths. Danse eliminated them in short order before tearing a boxy component with a single red light on its side off the spine of one of the destroyed robots. "Excellent," he said. "This is exactly what we came here for. Time to leave." He gestured towards the elevator in the corner of the room. "That should take us back to ground level. From there we can head back to the police station, get that transmitter activated and call for reinforcements." He paused. "There's no way to tell how long it'll take for them to arrive, but I'll sleep better knowing help is on the way."

The journey back to the police station was uneventful. As they entered the battered building, Danse removed his helmet, handed Scribe Haylen the transmitter and turned to Nate after picking up a stash of caps from the police station's reception desk. "Here – for your assistance," he said as he held the metal box out. Nate took the caps gratefully, stashing them in his pack, before Danse continued "Now that your payment's been dealt with, I wanted to make you a proposal. You seem like the kind of person who I'd want fighting with me, not against me, so I'm offering you the chance to join us—to be a part of something greater than yourself. To join the Brotherhood of Steel and make your mark on the world." He held out his armoured gauntlet. "Do we have a deal?"

Grasping Danse's metal fingers, Nate smiled. "Absolutely. I'd be honoured to join. The Brotherhood could be the best thing that's happened to me in a while."

Danse's scarred face cracked into a broad grin. "I should hope so, soldier. Now that you have the entirety of our fellowship behind you, nothing can stand in your way."

"I hope you're right," Nate said. "I need your help tracking somebody down. They might know where to look for a… a friend who's gone missing."

Danse looked puzzled for a moment before he turned to where Scribe Haylen was sitting examining the transmitter and occasionally scrawling something down onto a sheet of paper attached to a clipboard. "Haylen," he said, causing her to abruptly look up from her notes. "I have a mission for you once you're done with the transmitter. Our new recruit here needs someone found ASAP, and I can't think of anyone more qualified."

Haylen nodded. "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir," she said, before she directed her attention towards Nate. "Welcome aboard, soldier. If your friend's out there, we'll find them…"