Headquarters: Capital Wasteland - Chapter Seventy Nine (Patreon)

It felt strange dressing in civilian clothes after wearing military fatigues and basic outfits for so long. In some ways, they were more comfortable. Well, actually, in most ways they were more comfortable, and yet standing in the HQ in jeans and a basic T-shirt, I almost felt naked, like I needed to tug and straighten my collar or something. That was strange enough, especially since I had never attempted to set grooming standards for my men or myself.

It was equally strange to see my whole squad wearing casual clothes as well. Never mind that we could have likely supplied clothes to half of Megaton at this point.

When I had sent Johnson and his team out to find some civilian clothes for us, I had expected him to snag some standard stuff and come back with maybe a cart half full at most. Instead, he had raided an entire street's worth of clothing shops, three in total, of everything not nailed down. A good chunk of what had been in the shops was unusable, rotted to hell and back by moisture. The rest, especially the stock still sealed up in the backs of each shop, was either serviceable or in practically mint condition.

It made me wonder why everyone in Megaton was wearing rags. I knew that not even the bravest, or dumbest, scavers liked to go deep into the city, but if these clothes were here, they would be in other places too. The only thing I could think of was that since everyone was dressed in comparative rags, no one cared about clothes enough to spend money on them, so no scavers brought them back to sell.

Avery “no kill like overkill” Johnson decided to bring everything not rotted out home, filling a cart to the brim, and stuffing the rest into their camel packs. We ended up storing most of it in the north-most repaired and reinforced building attached to our walls. The interior was dry and waterproof, so I decided to just call a chunk of the first floor storage, specifically for stuff that would take up too much space to stuff in our storage area.

Once we had gone through and grabbed a few outfits for ourselves, specifically not taking the pristine quality stuff that was still sealed up, the remaining clothes were stuffed back into a corner, stacked up in boxes and a few footlockers.

In the end, we managed to find some worn clothes that looked relatively normal, though it was harder for Madison and Kelsey, as women's clothes in the pre-war Fallout universe were... products of the time, to say the least. Men's clothes could be adapted pretty easily, but there weren’t a lot of ways you could make a pastel blue dress not look like it was from the fifties.

By the time everyone was dressed and ready, it was early afternoon. We were gathered in the dark room, all three squads. My squad was in their disguises, while Rex and Johnson's squads were dressed in full kit, armed and ready should we need backup. 

“Alright, Carlos, Stewart, Leon, you guys in first,” I said, repeating the plan we'd already agreed on. “Two minutes, then turn around and come back. If none of you have returned at five minutes, Johnson and his men are coming in after you.” 

Carlos nodded, double-checking that his pistol was tucked into his waistband before heading to the second dark door, which looked identical to the first. He paused to check the scanner, which was an early reward that allowed us to see if there were any threats around the connection point. When he was satisfied nothing was waiting to ambush us, all three of them opened the doors and stepped through.

As the door shut behind them, I watched it impatiently, counting down the seconds. For a full minute, nothing happened, and then another thirty seconds passed, and I glanced at Johnson. Suddenly, Leon finally opened the foreboding door back up and stuck his head through. 

“Sir… everything is clear, but you're going to want to see this,” he said, before coming through fully and holding the door open. “Seriously, there's plenty of room.”

Wondering what he meant, I quickly passed through the open door, walking through the dark connection point. When I stepped out into the XCOM world, I barely made it a few steps before I stopped, looking around with wide eyes.

We were inside a large, dark cave, maybe ten meters tall and twenty meters wide in both directions. The stone was dark grey, and as far as I could see, it was unbroken and sound, despite its natural texture. Off to one side, I could see Carlos and Stewart, standing alongside a tunnel that showed some light coming through, which, as far as I could tell, was the only source of light in the cave. 

As more of my men came through, I cleared the entrance at the connection point and headed to Carlos. The man had his pistol in his hand, covering the entrance.

“What's the outside look like?” I asked as I approached.

“We haven’t checked yet,” he responded. “The connection zone was safe, so we sent Leon back to get you.” 

“Right… well, nothing to it but to do it,” I said, stepping out into the light, walking through a tunnel, and finally stepping outside.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust, but eventually they did, letting me get a good look at the surrounding area. 

We were relatively high up, the cave opening out to a small rocky platform on the side of a large cliff overlook. Past that was an arid, mostly unbroken desert. Past that was…more desert, some buttes of various sizes, and then more desert. I stepped out onto the open platform and looked down, seeing the swell of sand and rock that usually formed at the base of naturally formed buttes. I turned and looked up, unsurprised to see the cave was built into a massive chunk of erosion-resistant stone. 

Judging by how the sides seemed to stretch out with barely a curve, the chunk of rock we were on dwarfed its closest neighbor by at least three or four times. 

“Well… at least we don’t have to worry about Advent finding us out here…” I said, as Carlos and Johnson both stepped out of the cave entrance. 

“Well… shit,” Johnson said, dropping his cigar to the floor and stomping out. “There goes just poking around a bit.”

“Something could be on the other side,” Carlos pointed out. “For all we know, Vegas is just around the corner.”

“I… have a feeling it's not, but we can check,” I agreed with a nod. “All it will take is a walk in either direction.”

Five minutes later, the same group that first stepped through the connection point was making their way down a winding path that led from the exit of the tunnel down to the desert below. Meanwhile, we had returned inside, leaving Andrew out at the entrance to wait for the others.

“It's certainly hidden,” I commented, standing at the center of the cave. “Not sure how much that would count for if Advent started looking around with any sort of seriousness…”

“How did this XCOM stay hidden?” Rex asked, a frown on his face. "Running missions from a single point gets noisy."

“Well, for the second one, they had a mobile base,” I explained, running my hand through my hair. “A great big flying carrier called the Avenger. I think it was supposed to make the story feel more like guerrilla war, the underdog against an entrenched foe. The first one, though, you were in a huge underground… base…Has anyone found the tablet yet?”

“It's by the connection point, sir.” 

I nodded and walked over immediately, pulling the tablet from the side of the stone wall. I sat down on a nearby chunk of rock and focused on the single option presented. Just as it had been in the Horizon world, the first option was two hundred caps to clear and prepare the area. While I was hesitant to throw two hundred caps away on something we might not end up using, I had a hunch that this base was going to be something a bit different from a braided wooden fort. 

Eventually, I gave up resisting the call of my curiosity and had almost everyone retreat back through the connection point, while I stood on the outside, looking out at the desert, Andrew standing with me. A quick purchase later, I headed inside, the rest returning soon after. 

The results were encouraging, even before I started looking through the tablet again. 

The entire cavern had been enlarged and redone, as if shaping it for general purpose use. The connection point had been modified, now bearing a reinforced frame. I could see two more frames on the opposite side of the cavern from the entrance, but they led into solid rock. 

A quick investigation of the tablet later showed that I could clear another room out from each doorway, only now it would cost just a hundred caps each. This time I held off, instead looking at the upgrades I could purchase for the already existing cavern. The first one, for five hundred caps, would reinforce and hide the facility, and was noted to apply to the entire secondary HQ, including rooms I cleared and filled later. 

I held off buying it, but couldn’t help but chuckle and shake my head. When Rex stepped in from the connection point, I caught his questioning look and started to explain, unable to keep the excitement out of my voice.

“It's based, at least loosely, on the first XCOM,” I said, gesturing to the frames around the door and, now that I looked, reinforcing metal beams running through the ceiling. “You excavate caverns and build inside them. That game was more like you're preparing a small army, rather than a small strike force… Or maybe that was just the Long War mod…”

I trailed off with a frown, trying to piece together just exactly what we were meant to do with all of this. Our camels and carts might be revolutionary transportation in the Fallout world, but crossing a desert I couldn't even see the end of, that was a bit much for them. Not because they couldn't, their ability to hold water and transport food meant we could supply quite a long trek, but rather because there was no way to make a week-long trek worth a simple raid.

Not to mention the fact that a caravan of dunebots was not something you could make a quick escape in. Advent would be on our tails before we could even make it halfway home. The idea of sneaking away, hitting a few targets, and sneaking back was impossible if there was nothing around us as far as the eye could see.

Then, a rather exciting thought popped into my head.

“Skyrangers,” I said to myself, my eyes widening and a huge smile spreading across my face as I looked around.

“Sky what?” Johnson asked. “You feeling alright, kid?”

“Skyrangers,” I repeated, turning to look at the older soldier excitedly. “In the XCOM universe, they are these insanely long-distance, fast transport, part jet, part VTOL. Honestly, canonically, I think they might be faster than the Pelican by a massive margin. They don’t have a fraction of the hauling capacity, but the XCOM teams used them to engage in strikes all across the world, all from one location.”

“That sound… broken as hell,” Johnson responded. “How the hell did they get something moving that fast?” 

“It's probably not as insanely fast in a more realistic setting,” I pointed out. “But it was a huge part of the story, in all XCOM versions, new and old.”

“And you think we might get access to it?” Rex asked. “It would make our current position a lot less complicated.”

“Yeah, it would,” I agreed with a smirk. “It would also make traveling around the Fallout world a lot easier.”

“Hold on… you think it's something like the stables?” Joseph asked with a frown. “Building one here will let you build one there?” 

“It's very possible,” I admitted. “There is no way to know until I upgrade this base to the required level… but it makes sense in a way. We can already do a lot of what an XCOM base could do, and every world has some sort of special reward for upgrading their base high enough. I guess they could offer some other bit of tech… but it makes sense that the Skyranger would be the special unlock.

It was just a hunch, and probably a stretch, but I couldn't help but hope. Having access to flying transport would change everything.

“So the Skyrangers would be like a LAATi,” Rex stated, nodding in understanding. “Or the Vertibirds you mentioned?”

"Depending on how well they function, absolutely,” I agreed with a nod. “The upper limits of the Vertibird have always been vague, from what I remember at least, so it should cover a good chunk… they probably won't be able to crisscross the planet…”

In all likelihood, even if my hunch was correct, which there was a good chance it wasn't, the cost was likely going to be significant. The stables required a bit of unlocking to make happen, and each mount they made took two zoomorph corpses to unlock. There was no way they would happily hand over such a powerful tool without making us earn it first.

“Okay, I think we invest in this place,” I informed everyone after a few more minutes of waiting and thinking. “Even if the guys come back and tell us there is no one in sight, dumping caps here is worth it. Having a skyranger or vertibird equivalent would change everything, so I think it's worth throwing thousands of caps and more at it, even if it comes out the special unlock for the XCOM world something completely different.”

“It would be a game changer,” Rex agreed with a nod. “At bare minimum, having a transport that could drop people off anywhere in the area is a huge boon.”

“That's small fries,” Johnson said. “Imagine how easily it will be to make caps when you can sell to anyone? Suddenly how fast we can make supplies is the only limiting factor, not waiting for the various towns around us to use up what we sold.”

"Exactly," I said, nodding in agreement. "Even with harsh limitations, a fast aerial transport could unlock the entire East Coast, maybe even beyond. It's probably a bit early to start poking at other major locations, but there are hundreds of settlements to trade with, places to loot, and more."

"Don't get too excited," Johnson said, calling my focus back. "We have no idea if that's what you're going to unlock, and like we said, even if it is, it ain't gonna be cheap."