Fallout - Chapter 99: Deterrence and Cooperation (Patreon)

On the airport runway, Jace and Maxson's polite exchange continued.

Both men spoke courteously and chose their words carefully. But they both knew this was not really a friendly conversation.

They were testing each other.

Maxson was testing Jace. Was this self-proclaimed General genuinely capable, or merely a figurehead propped up by his subordinates?

Jace was testing Maxson in return. Was this young man who had become Elder at sixteen truly a gifted leader, or simply a mascot elevated by his bloodline?

They talked for roughly ten minutes. The conversation drifted from the Commonwealth's climate to Wasteland commerce, from the distribution of settlements to the threat posed by mutated creatures.

Nothing but harmless pleasantries.

Maxson decided to change tactics.

"General," he said with just the right amount of courtesy, "since you're already here, why not come aboard the airship for a tour?"

The moment he said it, the platoon of T-60 Knights behind him seemed to straighten almost in unison.

They understood what their Elder meant.

Let this backwater Wastelander see what real technological power looked like. Let him see what the Brotherhood of Steel truly had at its disposal.

Maxson was certain Jace would refuse.

Walking onto another faction's home ground and placing his life in their hands was not something any rational leader would do.

If Jace refused, Maxson would gain the psychological upper hand.

Jace's answer was simple.

"Sure."

Maxson paused.

The T-60 Knights behind him paused as well.

A subdued stir passed through Jace's formation.

Once the Brotherhood recovered from its initial surprise, a different mood began to spread among them.

He was really coming aboard?

Fine.

Once he stepped onto the Prydwen, he would be on Brotherhood territory.

Their intelligence division had already received reports that the Minutemen controlled a pre-War robot factory capable of mass-producing combat robots.

That factory was exactly the kind of resource the Brotherhood desperately needed.

If they could use this opportunity to learn more about it...

Maxson's mind was already turning.

But Jace had not finished.

"Before we go up, though, I'd like to treat everyone to some fireworks."

He raised his left arm, checked the time on his Pip-Boy, then looked at Maxson as casually as though he were asking about the weather.

"You might want to find some cover."

Maxson stared at him.

"What do you mean?"

...

Twenty minutes earlier, somewhere along the Chinese coast.

Inside a submarine, a tactical nuclear missile had completed all pre-launch checks.

Fuel pressurization complete.

Navigation system calibrated.

Target coordinates locked.

The silo hatch slowly opened.

A second later, a slender missile shot out.

Once airborne, it quickly changed course and headed north. It would trace an arc near low Earth orbit over the Arctic before diving south toward the eastern United States.

The launch crew watched the missile disappear into the sky.

"Did our comrade in America request fire support?"

"Looks like it. But he only asked for one shot, so there's nothing to worry about. Let's get back to what we were doing."

...

Back in the Commonwealth, in the eastern United States.

The missile entered its terminal dive.

Everyone across the Commonwealth heard it.

A deep, continuous roar rolled down from the sky like the heavens themselves were tearing apart.

It was the series of sonic booms produced by a supersonic missile tearing through the lower atmosphere.

Everyone at Boston Airport looked up.

The Brotherhood Knights instinctively tightened their grips on their weapons, scanning the sky for the source of the sound.

Maxson whipped around toward Jace.

Jace simply stood there looking up, his expression no different from someone waiting for rain that had been forecast earlier that day.

Then someone saw it.

A white trail descending almost vertically from impossibly high in the sky.

Its destination was obvious.

Boston Airport.

More precisely, Fort Strong beside it.

The missile slammed into Fort Strong.

At the instant of impact, a blinding white flash exploded across everyone's vision.

Then the underground military storage facilities beneath Fort Strong went up with it.

The base contained a vast stockpile of pre-War mini nukes. When the missile warhead struck, those mini nukes detonated as well.

Hundreds upon hundreds of miniature nuclear warheads released their stored energy almost simultaneously.

A mushroom cloud began rising over Boston's eastern coastline.

Orange-red flames churned at its base, fading upward into gray-black smoke and debris. Above that, an enormous white cloud continued expanding, taking on an eerie pink hue beneath the sunlight.

The shockwave raced outward fast enough to see.

Compressed air formed a translucent curved wall that flattened everything in its path.

A violent blast of wind struck the people on the airport runway.

Sand, gravel, and scorching air hammered against power armor plating with a rapid metallic rattle.

Several Scribes without power armor were blown off their feet. Nearby Knights barely managed to grab them before they were sent tumbling away.

Nate stood directly in the blast.

Debris hammered against his T-51 armor with a series of sharp clangs.

He did not move.

He stared at the mushroom cloud, his pupils tightening.

Two hundred years.

He was seeing that light again.

But this time was different.

This time he was standing on the ground.

He was wearing armor.

He had a weapon in his hands.

And his feet were planted firmly beneath him.

High above, the Prydwen took the nuclear blast's shockwave head-on.

The forty-thousand-ton airship lurched violently in the gale.

Several anchor chains securing it to the airport snapped taut at once, the metal groaning under the strain.

Then one chain broke.

A second followed.

Then a third.

Within moments, every chain securing the airship had been torn loose by the shockwave.

The Prydwen was blown away like a leaf.

The massive airship rolled halfway over and drifted sideways for hundreds of meters. Its lift engines shrieked as they desperately adjusted thrust and fought to restore its attitude.

Fortunately, sheer mass was on its side.

Forty thousand tons helped it stabilize.

But for those few dozen seconds, everyone aboard the Brotherhood flagship experienced the most violent aerial ride of their lives.

The airport fell completely silent.

Brotherhood Knights.

Scribes.

Minutemen.

Everyone simply stared.

Where Fort Strong had once stood, only a massive crater remained, rapidly filling with seawater.

The concrete structures around its perimeter had been completely vaporized. It looked as though an enormous spoon had scooped a chunk out of the earth.

Atlantic seawater poured through the breach, throwing up huge clouds of steam.

Jace looked toward the crater and mentally checked the wind direction.

The recent winds had been coming from the southwest.

The radioactive fallout would be carried out over the ocean rather than inland, so it would not interfere with the Commonwealth's agricultural expansion next year.

He turned toward Maxson.

The Elder was still standing exactly where he had been, facing Fort Strong.

He had not been injured.

But the blast had clearly done something to him psychologically.

"Elder Maxson?"

Very slowly, Maxson turned his helmet toward Jace.

Jace's tone remained calm, as though he were inviting a friend into his backyard for tea.

"So, can we go up for that tour now?"

Maxson remained silent for several seconds.

Then he glanced toward the Prydwen.

The airship was hovering roughly a kilometer from the airport, slowly correcting its position. Several broken anchor chains still dangled beneath its hull.

"Of course," Maxson replied from behind his helmet, his voice slightly lower than before. "But you'll need to give us a moment. The airship has to be moored again."

Jace nodded with almost excessive understanding.

"Of course. I've got plenty of time."

Maxson turned and made several gestures toward a Knight-Captain beside him.

The officer immediately began organizing personnel to secure the Prydwen again.

Maxson turned back to Jace.

"Please wait inside the airport terminal."

Jace nodded and led his group into the Boston Airport terminal without the slightest hesitation.

The Tankbots followed behind in a perfectly ordered line.

Whatever plans had been quietly forming on the Brotherhood's side, questions about the Minutemen's robot factory, thoughts of intimidating Jace once he was aboard the Prydwen, all of them disappeared.

Danse intercepted Jace at the airport entrance.

He approached quickly, his expression behind the visor impossible to read.

"General. That missile... was yours?"

Jace did not deny it.

"Yes."

Danse's breathing caught.

"Relax," Jace said calmly. "We don't strike our allies first."

Danse let out a long breath and nodded solemnly.

Then he turned and hurried back toward the Prydwen, his steps noticeably lighter than before.

...

Roughly two hours later, the Prydwen had been secured again.

The airship hovered steadily above Boston Airport.

Eight new anchor chains hung from its bow and stern, fixed by ground crews to anchor points embedded in the ground.

This time, they had driven in several extra anchors.

Clearly, the earlier shockwave had left an impression.

Jace stood beside a terminal window, watching the airship outside, then stretched.

"Let's go. Time to head up."

Preston frowned.

"General, we're really going aboard?"

"They invited us. It'd be rude not to."

"But..."

"Relax." Jace waved him off. "They won't dare touch us."

In the end, everyone went.

Jace had originally planned to take only Nate.

Then he reconsidered and decided to bring the whole group.

Josie and Emma wanted to see the airship up close.

Jackson wanted to inspect the Brotherhood's engineering.

Sturges was fascinated by the nuclear-powered lift system.

Anthony wanted to assess the scale of the Brotherhood's logistics.

Ronnie Shaw wanted to observe their training standards.

And Preston insisted on coming.

That brought the group to nine people.

Maxson was already waiting on the entrance deck when they arrived, his posture formal.

"Welcome aboard, General."

Jace gave a slight nod and stepped onto the deck.

"Follow me," Maxson said. "I'll show you around the airship."

The bridge on the forward deck was filled with indicator lights and display screens.

Several Scribes sat at their stations, monitoring the Prydwen's systems.

Next came the bow balcony.

It was a small open platform projecting from the very front of the airship, completely exposed to the wind.

The gusts were strong enough to whip Josie's hair straight back.

"This view is incredible," Josie said with genuine admiration. "Put a heavy machine gun here and you could cover the whole airship."

Maxson gave her a brief glance and said nothing.

After the command deck, he led them into the Prydwen's main interior.

The main deck was divided into upper, middle, and lower levels, forming the living, combat, and operational core of the entire airship.

The upper level contained living quarters and research facilities.

The forward section held the soldiers' bunks and mess hall. The bunks were stacked two high, compact but meticulously organized.

Several soldiers sat at long tables eating.

The rear section housed the biological research station.

Inside the laboratory, several Scribes worked with test tubes and instruments.

Nate's sharp eyes immediately caught sight of several plants growing in one corner.

Their leaves were long and slender, blue-green beneath a faint coating of pale frost.

They stood out immediately.

Nate remembered the classified file concerning Nirn.

Nirnroot.

"We're conducting focused research on mutated organisms and unusual plants found throughout the Wasteland," Maxson explained.

"Understanding their biological characteristics helps us develop operational plans."

Jace noticed the Nirnroot as well, but said nothing.

He merely nodded.

The middle deck housed command, medical, armaments, and administrative facilities.

Doors lined both sides of the corridor.

Operations rooms.

Communications center.

Medical station.

Armory.

Power armor maintenance bay.

The lower deck was mostly cargo storage and engineering space.

Ammunition crates, fuel drums, and spare components were stacked throughout the cargo hold.

Several T-60 suits awaiting repair were secured to workstations, their armor plates removed to expose servo motors and hydraulic lines beneath.

Sturges crouched beside one disassembled T-60 for quite a while and asked several questions about heat dissipation in the joint motors.

At first, the technician handling the repairs looked openly dismissive.

He clearly assumed the Wasteland bumpkin knew nothing.

After a few questions, his tone changed.

"You... actually studied power armor maintenance?"

"I've had things go wrong before," Sturges replied with a grin. "So I looked into it a little."

The technician fell silent and went back to his work.

After touring the main functional areas, the group entered a quiet auxiliary corridor.

Very few people passed through here.

Only a handful of Scribes hurried by carrying data pads.

Josie hesitated for a moment before speaking.

"Elder Maxson..."

Maxson stopped and turned around.

"I've heard some of the Brotherhood's stories about you," Josie said curiously. "They say you killed a Deathclaw by yourself when you were thirteen, and that scar on your face came from that fight. Is that true?"

Her expression was completely serious.

But Jace understood what she really meant.

She did not believe it.

That was hardly surprising.

Josie had sparred with Nate and accompanied Jace on field missions.

She knew how terrifying a real Deathclaw was.

A thirteen-year-old killing one alone sounded about as believable as a six-year-old punching a Brahmin to death.

Jace quietly cleared his throat, trying to ease the tension.

Maxson remained silent for a moment.

Then he sighed softly, sounding tired and resigned.

"The stories are exaggerated."

"It did happen, but I wasn't alone."

He raised a hand and touched the scar on his face.

"I did get this scar during that fight. But the Brotherhood's internal retelling of the incident has gotten somewhat out of hand."

Josie nodded and did not press further.

Jace, however, caught the meaning beneath Maxson's answer.

He knew he had been built up into something larger than himself.

Jace took the opportunity.

"Elder Maxson, there's something I'd like to discuss with you privately."

"Of course."

Jace followed Maxson into a private room deeper inside the airship.

The room was small.

A metal table.

Two chairs.

A pre-War photograph of the Washington Monument hung on the wall.

The moment the door locked, the atmosphere subtly changed.

Jace remained standing in front of the table and went straight to the point.

"There's something I don't understand."

"You're the Elder of the eastern Brotherhood. For an expedition like this, sending a Paladin should have been enough."

"Why did you insist on coming personally?"

Something shifted in Maxson's eyes.

He did not answer immediately.

He walked toward the window and stared outside for several seconds before finally turning back.

"I had reasons to lead this expedition myself."

"Let me guess," Jace said evenly.

"Your authority in the Capital Wasteland has been hollowed out."

"You want to do what Elder Lyons once did. Leave the old system behind and build something new somewhere else."

"That's why you personally led the expedition into the Commonwealth."

Silence filled the room.

Maxson did not deny it.

That silence was answer enough.

"How did you know?" he asked quietly.

Jace did not answer.

He pulled out a chair and sat down.

"There's an old saying: 'Name and authority must never be entrusted to others.'"

He raised one finger.

"Name."

"You destroyed your own."

"You allowed Elder Lyons to be discredited and rejected his entire path. In doing so, you threw away your moral legitimacy, the goodwill of the people, the political basis for ruling the Capital Wasteland, and the reputation of being its protector."

Then he raised a second finger.

"Authority."

"Now you can't even firmly control your own base in the Capital Wasteland or the power structure back home."

"So you've had to leave, change locations, and build a new organization around yourself."

"An expedition?"

Jace looked at him.

"I'd call it exile."

Maxson stood perfectly still.

His entire body had gone tense.

Every sentence from Jace was like a surgical knife, cutting straight into the situation Maxson had deliberately refused to examine too closely.

"You're right," Maxson finally said, resignation creeping into his voice. "But I didn't have another choice."

"Why?"

"If I did nothing, the Brotherhood would split again."

"This time, it could be worse than when the Outcasts broke away."

"So you chose to leave first."

"Yes."

Jace looked up at him.

Then he said something Maxson clearly had not expected.

"What if I told you I'd help?"

Maxson's head snapped up.

The surprise in his eyes was impossible to hide.

"Why would you help me?"

Jace did not answer immediately.

He leaned back in the chair as though organizing his thoughts.

Then he spoke.

"Arthur Maxson."

"Age ten. Killed his first Super Mutant during a training exercise."

"Age thirteen. Killed a Deathclaw single-handedly."

"Age fifteen. Killed the Shepherd, leader of the Super Mutants in the Capital Wasteland."

"Age sixteen. Became the youngest Elder in Brotherhood history and reunited the Outcasts with the Lyons chapter."

He recited Maxson's official record.

The glorious accomplishments repeated again and again in Brotherhood broadcasts.

Then Jace paused.

"So far, not a single publicly acknowledged defeat."

He gave Maxson a meaningful look.

"Quite the 'Ad Victoriam.'"

Jace did not believe a word of the propaganda.

Take the incident when Maxson was ten.

Jace knew what had really happened.

According to the story he remembered, Sarah Lyons had taken Maxson outside for training when they encountered an isolated Super Mutant.

Sarah had already badly wounded it.

Maxson merely fired the finishing shot.

Even the Lone Wanderer, the protagonist of Fallout 3, had only been a ten-year-old kid shooting Radroaches with a BB gun.

As for killing a Deathclaw at thirteen, defeating a Super Mutant leader at fifteen, and becoming Elder at sixteen...

Every account stripped away luck.

Stripped away assistance.

Stripped away every external factor.

What remained was a succession of clean, shining heroic legends.

Maxson's expression did not change, but the complicated emotions in his eyes were impossible to conceal.

"Someone's been helping you from the shadows all along, haven't they?" Jace asked with complete confidence.

Maxson said nothing.

But a figure surfaced in his mind.

That senior who had emerged from a Vault.

The Lone Wanderer.

A Sentinel of the Brotherhood of Steel.

The kid from Vault 101.

No power armor.

No elite heavy weapons.

Yet shortly after leaving the Vault, he had cleared Raider strongholds one after another and carved a path through the ruins by force.

He had entered the Museum of History alone, fought through halls crawling with Ghouls, and fought his way back out again.

When he fought alongside the Brotherhood of Steel, he had stood against massed Super Mutant attacks without giving an inch.

He had stormed Raven Rock alone, the Enclave's central base in the Capital Wasteland, and shattered its elite forces.

During the final battle, he had charged at the front through concentrated Enclave fire.

And at the crucial moment, he had entered the reactor chamber alone, manually entered the code, and endured lethal radiation to activate the purifier.

That was not a legend.

It had actually happened.

Afterward, he spent years sweeping the Capital Wasteland clean of Enclave remnants and military outposts, uprooting them one by one until the Enclave ceased to be a serious threat.

Along the way, he also cleared the Super Mutant strongholds that Brotherhood propaganda would later fold into "Maxson's accomplishments."

Even the territory where Maxson later claimed the kill on the Super Mutant leader known as the Shepherd had already been torn open by that man first.

Watching Maxson remain silent, Jace already had his answer.

He stood.

"To tell you the truth, I've always wanted this airship of yours."

"After seeing the inside, I want it even more."

"I'd love to just take it from you right now."

The heavy atmosphere in the room abruptly broke.

Maxson stared at him.

"But we really can't afford to provoke that big brother of yours," Jace continued, spreading his hands. "So..."

He extended one hand.

"Partners?"

Maxson looked down at the hand.

He remained silent for a full five seconds.

Then he reached out and took it.

"Partners."