Headquarters: Capital Wasteland - Chapter Seventy Seven (Patreon)

It didn't take long for us to realize we had gotten a bit ahead of ourselves. While we finally had our own system-linked power armor, an impressive and exciting achievement, we seemed to have forgotten that no one knew how to drive it. Sergeant Johnson had some experience with the concept, having piloted armor native to his home universe, but they were drastically different, and no one, especially him, was willing to risk shattering every bone in his body.

So, the three new sets of power armor were stuck where they were for now, because we needed training. The good news was that the training hall now offered power armor training. The bad news was that it cost a hundred and fifty caps, and would take two days to complete. We had enough caps to train one single person, which was obviously not enough. That meant it was time for another trade run. 

"We'll take a cart, load it up with supplies, then head to Megaton with a few extra soldiers and some of those extra dunebots," Johnson volunteered. "We sell what we can there, send the extra hands back with the caps, and you can get the training started now. Then my squad will continue on to the Citadel with the remaining supplies and the unlinked dunebots. With the carts, shouldn't take more than, what, a week, if that?" 

"That... seems like the best idea," I agreed with a nod after considering the idea for a few moments. "The funds from Megaton will be enough to start the training, probably finish it, but what the Brotherhood pays for the dunebots and the supplies will likely be a lot more than we need for training."

"You were talking about unlocking the next world after we had a good grasp on power armor," Joseph pointed out. "That was a thousand caps, right?"

"It was a thousand caps for something random, and two for selecting a genre," I corrected. "But that's a good idea, I want to start exploring new worlds."

"Fine by me, the Horizon world is interesting, and it will be useful if we ever want to start restoring the wasteland, but we need another source of money." Rex pointed out. "And more potentially useful resources."

"It's gonna take some serious upgrades before we can bring anything sizable between worlds," I pointed out. "But yeah, I'm looking forward to that as well."

"Right, then I'll go get my people up and moving," Johnson said with a nod. "We'll be ready to go in an hour, if that."

"Before that, Johnson, I want to discuss what our squad makeup will be," I said, the man sitting back down before he could even fully stand. "If we have a good chunk of caps coming in for training, power armor, robots, and a variety of new weapons, it's time to re-examine what each squad is going to be built of."

Currently, our squad makeup was two medics, one heavy gunner, one sniper, four normal riflemen, and one leader unit. Two of those riflemen were also trained separately in lockpicking and hacking. 

We sat around and debated what the final design of our squads would be for a few hours. The first thing we decided was that each squad would have two sets of power armor. One would be worn by the heavy gunner, and the other would be worn by one of the riflemen. The rifleman would need a new weapon, something to fit their new carry capacity and function as a heavy weapons platform, as well as training in that new weapon.

One of the remaining riflemen would be trained in repair, basically the equivalent of engineering, so we weren't playing roulette with every bit of tech we came across. I was tempted to stack engineering on our lockpick expert, but having two hands working to crack physical doors was worth spreading the load. 

Beyond our soldiers, we decided that, at first, we would have each squad have one of our new robots, rather than two, which was what we originally brought back enough robot hulls for. It wasn't that anyone doubted that they would be useful, since even if they were just trap sweepers, they would pay for the effort the first time they triggered something instead of my soldiers. Instead, it was that I wanted my people to get a feel for them before we started stuffing them into every squad. For all I knew, after some use, we might start deploying with six droids per squad, but for now, we would start small.

On top of that, we planned on adding some energy weapons experts to the group, depending on how interesting the weapons we brought back from the fort turned out to be. I was very interested in what the tesla cannon converted to, but depending on what we got, I could see having one or two people carrying an extra laser weapon. My soldiers were easily strong enough to carry two primary weapons and one secondary, as long as they weren't too bulky.

With a general plan for structuring our squads set, Johnson headed out to organize his squad. Carlos quickly joined him, hunting down a few volunteers from the remaining two squads for a day trip.

That left the day mostly empty for the remaining soldiers and me, with one team off making trades, so we filled the time by feeding the advanced armory everything we had brought back. Even after Carlos returned with the caps from Megaton, three thousand in total, and we got people started on their training, we kept feeding the armory.

First, we fed it a robot corpse, one of six, just to see how long it would take. After learning it would take six hours, we decided to hold off feeding it any more until that night. The order didn't really matter, since everything would be converted eventually, but while we were all hanging out waiting for the new shiny thing to pop out, we stuck to the energy weapons at first, which would likely take much less time and give us more entertainment. 

In total, over the next two days, we converted all of the energy weapons and all six robot corpses. The advanced armor took in each new item and spat it out with a new form and a connection to the HQ system. 

The weapon outputs were mildly interesting, with the advanced armory boiling down all the weapons we fed it into six laser rifles, four laser pistols, two plasma rifles and four plasma pistols, two laser LMGs, and one energy cannon. All of them looked different from their original models and would definitely catch the eye of the Brotherhood, but in their base forms, none of them did anything vastly different from the weapons they had been converted from. What made them special was that we could upgrade them through the system, and that they would self-repair and provide their own ammo on the same time scale as our normal kinetic weapons. 

The robot conversion was an entirely different story, as all six broken shells were converted into the same, bipedal tank. It had a bulky, roughly humanoid shape, if the humanoid had been hit in the head with an ACME anvil. It had a heavily armored, vaguely cube central torso with rounded corners and three glowing sensor bulbs facing forward. It had the equivalent of a SAW mounted on top of the blocky center, built into its own swivel, self-targeting setup. It was covered in various mechanical and armored panels, and had simple yet effective arms on either side of its torso, each capped with a set of basic grasping units.

It looked every bit like it stepped out of the video game. If I didn't know better, it could have absolutely passed for a native robot, probably something akin to a sentry bot, but less heavily armed.

It was also built into the system, meaning we could upgrade it with caps, though we would be holding off on that for now, if for no other reason than to figure out what needed to be upgraded and what didn't. 

When we finished converting the robots and the guns, we fed the armory more suits of power armor. The armory only had room for six suits in its storage, but thankfully by the time the second round was complete, the first person to start their training was done. We had just enough caps to start one person's training before anyone else, so they had nearly a day on everyone else. Thankfully, I made an informed, educated, and well-thought-out choice about who would get that early training.

"Good god, this is a fucking rush," I shouted, sealed inside a seven-foot pillar of hydraulics and steel. "I sort of understand where the Brotherhood superiority complex comes from now!" 

Yes, I took the early training for myself.

Granted, I was always planning to make sure that the squad leaders could use power armor, as well as the repair specialist, so they could move and test it while doing repairs, if they were needed in the field, but when it came down to it, I just really wanted to try the power armor on. 

"Just don't kick anything this way, please," Carlos said with a wince. "I really don't want 'could catch an engine block with his face, but only once' written on my gravestone." 

We were standing not far outside of the HQ, with Carlos and Joseph watching as I kicked, punched, dragged, and just generally destroyed the burned-out husks of several cars, ones that were already too broken to be converted into carts. 

The amount of strength the suit gave me was impressive, allowing me to tear apart the old wrecks pretty easily, but it wasn't anything that I didn't expect. Fallout power armor had always been more about thick steel and the strength to carry it and a big gun around, rather than turning the wearer into some sort of unstoppable juggernaut of unending strength. Yes, when wearing one you became a minor juggernaut of a decent but limited amount of strength, but that was more of a side benefit of making you strong enough to walk around with a minigun, a shit ton of ammo, and steel plating two inches thick or more. 

Who knows how that would change as we upgraded our armor in various ways, but for now it was still an impressive bit of armor, which would definitely go a long way to making out squads pretty impressive. Between having two soldiers wearing power armor, and one of our stumpy robots in each squad, we would have some impressive firepower.

Yes, when it came to stealth, we might as well call ahead to let the enemy know we were on our way, but in terms of firepower, we were doing great.

For the next week or so, all the way until Jonson and his people came back, and then a few days past that, we focused on training, practicing with our newly gained weapons and power armor. We set up a sort of obstacle course outside of the HQ, passing through buildings around wrecks, and a few more things, and those who were being assigned power armor ran it pretty frequently, getting to know the armor and the skills they gained after two days of "training" 

For my squad, Joseph got one set of power armor, while our heavy gunner, Andrew Larson, got the other. Both of them were very excited at the concept, while Joseph was even more happy to also get access to, and training for, one of the Laser LMGs.

It was a bulky, angular weapon with a few glowing red strips and a quick-release heat-dispersion cylinder along the side that could pop open and quickly vent the heat built up from firing the weapon on full auto. It was built tough, and for fifty credits the grip and shoulder mount could be modified to work with power armor. We would have to do the same thing for all of the power armor weapons, which was a pain, but could have been worse.

Our new power armor soldiers also trained running the course while ordering around their Stomper unit, which was what the men were already calling our robots, since they had a tendency to stomp around a bit more than necessary.

The idea was that, at least in my mind, the power armor soldier and the robot would be working together a lot. The power armor's extra durability, plus my willingness to throw away the robots to keep my troops out of danger, meant they would likely be lumped together when assaulting dangerous positions, while the rest of the squad held back for support.

We also had the squads run through the courses together, with the power armor and robots. That actually proved to be a bigger deal than I thought, especially when we put pressure on them by having the other squads throw rocks at them as stand-ins for weapons. Both the stompers and the power armor were less agile than a person, obviously, but dealing with that while trying to charge around obstacles, or worse, through a hallway, was even more difficult than one would imagine. The main issue was that they moved at completely different speeds. This meant that a normal walking speed for each was different, but worse was that a normal person's run, or even jog, was too fast for a power-armored walk, but a power-armored run was far too fast for a normal person's run.

It reminded me of escorting NPCs around as they talked in a poorly designed game, where you would have to constantly run and stop, run and stop, or walk and catch up, walk and catch up to the person you should have just been walking alongside. 

Thankfully, it was possible to moderate the issue on both ends, and with some intelligence, coordination, as well as a fair bit of practice, they could move smoothly through a building together. 

As long as the power armor could actually fit in the first place. 

Thankfully, this difference in cadence was a lot less difficult to fix when just walking around, otherwise, having the squads patrol with power armor soldiers in tow would have been terrible. It was even less of a problem when the normal soldiers were on dunebots.

When Johnson and his squad returned, we signed them up for the appropriate training and started investing in some upgrades. Thankfully, the Brotherhood was more than happy to pay for all the supplies we brought them, as well as the camels, which, according to Johnson, they were absolutely ecstatic to receive. That meant we had plenty of caps, even after setting aside three thousand for unlocking the next world. 

I immediately put caps into improving our standard armor again, as well as the undersuit, making it more energy-resistant and bullet-resistant. After we tested them, we found that the armor panels of our armor were now bulletproof against our heaviest rifle round, while the cloth parts would take most pistol rounds. They were also pretty durable against energy weapons, absorbing the heat and dissipating the energy very well. 

After that, we had two thousand caps left, not including what we put to the side and what we had already spent on trading, but rather than going on another spending spree, I decided to hold off until after we unlocked a new world. That way, if we suddenly needed serious upgrades, like improved rad resistance or environmental protections, we could afford them.