Fallout - Chapter 127: Libertalia and the Teleporter (Patreon)

Early morning.

The northeastern coast of the Commonwealth.

A thin layer of gray-white mist hung over the sea, drifting slowly along the surface like something alive crawling between the waves. The distant horizon was barely visible, marked only by a hazy dark-gray line that separated sea from sky.

Below that line, a fortress rose from the water.

Its foundation was a large pre-War cargo ship that had capsized and run aground among the reefs just offshore.

The rusted hull had practically fused with the rocks, resembling a beached iron whale. Its deck stood more than ten meters above the water, covered with an uneven maze of shacks and fortifications built from wooden planks, sheet metal, and the stripped shells of old cars.

Three wooden bridges connected the wreck to the shore. Their surfaces were made from doors and floorboards scavenged from abandoned buildings, while the railings were held together with wire and hemp rope, looking as though they might collapse at any moment.

At the other end of the bridges sprawled a floating platform assembled from abandoned boats, pontoons, and docks. Iron anchors, steel cables, and wooden pilings secured everything to the reefs in the shallows, while gangplanks and rope ladders connected the different sections.

From a distance, it looked like a scrapyard floating on the sea.

This was Libertalia.

The largest raider stronghold on the Commonwealth's northeastern coast.

Then the morning calm shattered.

The sharp bursts of assault rifles.

The sustained roar of machine guns.

And, most chilling of all, the metallic whistle of mortar shells coming in from the distance.

Boom.

A mortar round struck beside a shack on the wreck's deck.

The blast ripped wooden planks and sheet metal apart like paper and hurled the debris into the air.

The raider inside didn't even have time to react.

The shockwave threw him out of the shack along with his bed.

At the far end of the wooden bridge, Minutemen soldiers were advancing.

They wore full combat armor, and their weapons were several steps above the junk carried by ordinary raiders. Some held modified combat rifles, others carried miniguns, while still others had flamers strapped to their backs.

This wasn't the disorganized charge of a raider gang.

It was a textbook advance under alternating cover.

The first line laid down suppressive fire while the second moved forward. Once the second line reached position, they covered the first as it advanced.

Every step was protected by fire.

Every piece of cover was used.

Seen from the shipwreck, the dark-green armored figures looked like a moving wall of steel, advancing slowly but relentlessly.

Behind them, on the coastal high ground in the distance, two Tankbots slowly adjusted the mortars mounted on their backs.

Every time another round came down, one of the shacks aboard the wreck disappeared in flame and flying debris.

The raiders of Libertalia descended into complete chaos.

Most of them had been drinking the night before, celebrating supplies they'd stolen from a coastal settlement several days earlier.

When the shooting started, many were blasted awake.

They fumbled for weapons, staggered out of their shacks, and found themselves facing a disciplined, well-equipped regular army whose numbers were far greater than anything they had imagined.

At the highest point of the wreck, inside the "captain's cabin" converted from the freighter's bridge, Wire jolted awake.

A mortar round landed less than ten meters from the wheelhouse.

The explosion shook the entire ship.

"Fuck..."

Wire cursed.

His head was still pounding from the previous night's drinking, and everything in front of him seemed to spin.

He stumbled to the wheelhouse window.

All of Libertalia had become a battlefield.

Every shack, every barricade, every section of wooden bridge he could see was caught in the fighting.

Muzzle flashes flickered through the morning mist like scattered fishing lights across the sea.

Explosions flashed one after another, each followed by smoke and debris erupting from another structure.

Under cover from distant mortars and machine guns, the Minutemen in dark-gray combat armor advanced from one end of the wooden bridge to the other as methodically as farmers harvesting a field.

Wire's face went pale.

"The Minutemen..."

He spun around and rushed for the cabin door.

Ever since the Minutemen's new General had taken command, Wire had known this day would come eventually.

Libertalia had survived this long not because it was particularly powerful, but because it was remote.

It sat among reefs off the Commonwealth's northeastern coast, far from any major road or large settlement.

For years, the Minutemen had been too busy dealing with threats in the heart of the Commonwealth. The Institute, the Brotherhood of Steel, Super Mutants, raiders. They simply hadn't had the resources to clear out some distant coastal stronghold.

Clearly, that was no longer the case.

Wire burst through the hatch and onto the deck.

The deck shook beneath his feet with every mortar impact.

Broken planks and twisted sheets of metal lay everywhere. He had to step over several of his men's bodies just to reach the ladder leading down.

He descended quickly.

He had rehearsed this escape route countless times.

Wire burst through the lower exit.

Sea wind struck him in the face, carrying the smell of gunpowder and smoke.

A fast boat was waiting at a makeshift dock just below the side of the wreck.

He took two steps toward it.

Then something caught his foot.

Wire stumbled.

His hands shot out instinctively to catch himself.

Something pressed against the back of his head.

Cold.

Metal.

Round.

A gun barrel.

Wire froze.

His face was pressed against the deck, his left cheek digging into a raised rivet. The bitter taste of rust entered his mouth.

His breathing quickened, his chest rising and falling violently, but he didn't dare move a muscle.

A voice came from behind him.

Cold as ice.

"James Wire."

Wire's pupils contracted.

Not just the nickname everyone called him.

His full name.

James Wire.

His lips moved as he tried to speak.

The barrel pressed forward slightly.

Not hard.

Just enough to silence him.

The voice continued.

"You've disgraced the Minutemen."

Something flickered in Wire's eyes.

At that moment, his final shred of hope burst like a bubble.

A rope dropped from above.

Another scout in a Type 92 Powered Suit vaulted over the deck behind them, moving cleanly and efficiently, landing with barely a sound.

The two scouts worked together without needing to speak.

They bound Wire's hands behind his back and stuffed a rag into his mouth.

Then they hauled him from the lower deck all the way back up to the main deck.

Along the way, he passed the bodies of his men.

They were still warm.

Wire's gaze moved across them.

He recognized several faces.

They had once repaired homes for settlements together.

They had struggled to survive in the wasteland together.

They had drunk and boasted together.

On cold nights, they had sat around campfires telling stories about the world before the War.

Now they lay dead across the deck, riddled with Minutemen bullets.

The fighting at Libertalia ended forty minutes later.

Calling it a battle wasn't entirely accurate.

From beginning to end, it had been more of a one-sided clearing operation.

Minutemen firepower pressed in from three directions at once. Mortar and machine-gun fire shredded the raiders' defenses while infantry in full combat armor steadily advanced across the wooden bridges and docks.

Suppressive fire.

Alternating cover.

The raiders' resistance finally collapsed after the fourth mortar barrage.

Some tried to escape by jumping into the sea.

But Minutemen snipers were positioned along the shoreline.

A few more fresh bodies soon floated on the water, slowly rising and falling with the waves beneath the morning mist.

Others surrendered.

They threw down their weapons, raised their hands above their heads, and emerged from the shacks one by one.

Jace stood on the main deck of the shipwreck.

Maxson stood behind him.

Recently, Jace had been teaching Maxson again.

He had realized that Maxson's education was seriously incomplete.

Maxson could recite the Brotherhood of Steel's doctrines from memory. He knew its regulations and history inside out and had systematically studied the major threats of the wasteland, including the Enclave and Super Mutants.

His combat training had been personally overseen by Sentinel Sarah Lyons, the Elder's daughter.

The problem was that Maxson knew almost nothing about power or politics.

Those were things Elder Lyons should have taught him.

But after Project Purity was completed, Elder Lyons died.

Not long afterward, Sarah Lyons was killed in action as well.

Maxson had only been ten years old at the time.

The Lone Wanderer had been too busy stabilizing the Brotherhood to teach him.

So, as an ally, Jace had decided to fill in some of the gaps in Maxson's education and make him a little more competent in that area.

After all, an incompetent ally could do an incredible amount of damage.

Two scouts escorted Wire up from the lower decks onto the main deck.

His hands were bound behind him.

The gag had been removed, though one side of his lip was swollen.

Wire saw Jace.

The Minutemen's new General.

The scouts forced him to his knees, then stepped aside.

Jace looked at him.

Wire raised his head and met Jace's gaze for a second.

Then he looked down.

Something about Jace's eyes made him uncomfortable.

There was no anger in them.

No killing intent.

Not even the righteous conviction of someone thinking, I'm here to judge you.

"James Wire."

Jace paused.

"No. I suppose I should call you Wire now."

Wire's voice was hoarse and slightly unsteady.

"General... let me explain. I had my reasons."

Jace merely tilted his head slightly.

Go on.

A flicker of hope appeared in Wire's eyes.

He swallowed and began.

"By the end of 2282, my men were starving. Escort work didn't pay reliably, and our food kept running lower.

"My two most trusted men, Williams and Anderson, started robbing Bunker Hill caravans behind my back.

"When the Bunker Hill guards came to confront us about it, I held the line. I personally had both of them executed.

"After that, we started taking contracts escorting Bunker Hill caravans to different settlements. But every time we reached the destination, the merchants came up with excuses to cut our pay, delay it, or refuse to pay us at all.

"Eventually, I couldn't take it anymore. I led my men in taking Libertalia, then started charging Bunker Hill caravans protection money instead."

Wire finished.

He looked up at Jace with a trace of expectation in his eyes.

He wanted Jace to understand that there was a difference between being forced into becoming a bad man and choosing to become one.

Jace remained silent for several seconds.

"If you had so many reasons to betray your oath..."

"Then why wasn't there even one reason strong enough to make you remain loyal?"

Wire's lips moved.

No sound came out.

A thousand answers churned through his head.

The caravans took advantage of us.

My men needed to eat.

I didn't have a choice either.

But every one of them fell apart before he could say it aloud.

A reason to remain loyal.

He had once had plenty.

The things General Becker had taught him.

Protect the Commonwealth.

Defend civilians.

Honor the Minutemen oath.

Those things had once been his bones.

His spine.

The things that kept him going through three straight days and nights of patrols in the wasteland.

But those bones had shattered the night he robbed his first caravan.

No one else had broken them.

He had removed them himself, one by one.

Because carrying nothing was much easier than bearing their weight.

Wire remained silent for a long time.

His eyes stayed lowered, fixed on a puddle of oil staining the deck.

It shimmered with rainbow colors beneath the morning light.

Beautiful.

And filthy.

Jace looked down at the man kneeling before him.

A former Minuteman.

A traitor who had broken his oath.

A failure who had gradually lost his backbone in the wasteland's meat grinder.

"You're not just a bad man."

"You're an idiot too."

Wire trembled slightly.

Jace's gaze moved toward the bodies being collected nearby, the remains of caravan guards and settlers captured by the raiders.

"Everything that happened here happened because of you."

Wire didn't argue.

He simply lowered his head even further, as though he wanted to bury himself in the deck.

Jace stopped looking at him.

He turned and gestured behind him.

Two Minutemen soldiers stepped forward and took positions on either side of Wire.

"Bury every body here, including the raiders."

He paused.

"Except his."

Wire's head snapped up.

"Hang him here," Jace said flatly. "No one is to take down his body. Not even after the wind has dried it to dust."

The two soldiers grabbed Wire by the arms and pulled him to his feet.

His boots left two long scrape marks across the deck.

His eyes remained fixed on Jace's back until the dark figure disappeared into the morning mist.

Then the soldiers dragged him beneath the tallest mast on the wreck.

A rope was thrown over the crossbeam.

After Wire was taken away, the deck fell quiet.

Jace stood at the edge, looking out over the distant sea.

The morning mist was slowly thinning.

Sunlight broke through the eastern horizon and scattered shattered flecks of gold across the water.

Maxson walked over and stopped beside him.

"Jace. Why did you say everything here was because of him?"

He sounded like a student asking his teacher about something he hadn't understood in class.

Jace turned toward him.

"The Minutemen are good people, but we're not pushovers. There's a principle called 'authority and responsibility must be equal.'"

Maxson's brow shifted slightly.

He had never heard the phrase before.

Jace explained.

"Power is the means you use to accomplish a task. Responsibility is your commitment to accomplishing it. The more authority you have, the more responsibility you carry."

He paused.

"And the reverse is also true."

He pointed toward the raider bodies being cleared away, his voice growing colder.

"After General Becker died, Wire was the leader of that squad. And that idiot somehow managed to drive a group with guns and the Minutemen name behind them into robbing caravans."

Maxson looked at the bodies for a moment.

Then he looked away.

Jace could tell he still didn't fully understand.

So he continued.

"Wire gave plenty of reasons. Their supplies were gone. The caravans cheated them. His men hadn't eaten for three days. Those were real problems."

"But a leader doesn't get to use real problems as excuses."

"He had decades of Minutemen reputation behind him. And at the time, the Minutemen were responsible for Bunker Hill's defense. All he had to do was spread the word about exactly how the merchants had cheated him."

"He wouldn't even have needed to fire a shot. Within a few months, the owner of that caravan would've been walking to Diamond City with a cane to beg for food."

Jace's voice hardened.

"That's why I called him stupid."

"He wasn't forced into becoming a bad man. He was too lazy to remain a good one."

"Robbery doesn't require thought. You don't have to swallow your pride. You don't have to endure being wronged. You don't have to lower your head and ask anyone for help."

"You just move your trigger finger."

Maxson didn't answer immediately.

He stood there with his arms folded across his chest, looking toward the distant sea.

But he wasn't really looking at the water.

He was looking inward.

Without realizing it, he began comparing Wire's situation to his own.

What are my responsibilities?

Is my authority secure?

If I fail the way Wire did, how will my men judge me?

Will they blame the circumstances?

Or will they blame me?

He didn't know.

Jace watched the changes in Maxson's expression without saying anything.

The seed had already been planted.

The rest was something Maxson would have to think through himself.

Jace turned and walked toward the other end of the deck, where several scouts were waiting for him.

His figure cast a long, narrow shadow in the morning light, the black Type 92 Powered Suit reflecting a muted sheen beneath the sun.

Maxson remained where he was, arms folded across his chest, motionless.

The sea breeze swept across his face, carrying the mixed scent of salt and gunpowder.

...

Minutemen Base. Underground Experimental Zone.

The room had once been a storage area and had now been completely cleared out.

Several industrial fluorescent tubes hung from the ceiling, casting pale white light with a faint flicker.

At the center of the room, an arched metal frame was being assembled.

A large circular reflector platform lay flat against the floor.

Three metal columns rose from the edge of the platform in an equilateral triangle, converging above to support the upper structure.

At the top sat a dark, opaque focusing lens.

This was the molecular teleporter.

Virgil knelt at the base of the frame.

His enormous body was hunched inside the apparatus.

Three hands, two of his own and one mechanical arm, worked simultaneously on two separate sets of wiring.

His left hand braced against the frame while his right tightened a mounting screw with a screwdriver.

His fingers were so thick they could barely close around the handle, yet his movements were astonishingly precise.

Every turn was exact.

A mechanical arm extended from his spine.

At that moment, it was connecting a set of coils along the inside of the arch.

Six metal fingers, moving with incredible precision, inserted wires thinner than strands of hair into their corresponding ports one by one.

Virgil wore a dark-red hooded robe that covered his entire body from head to toe.

The fabric was thick enough that its material was difficult to identify.

A gas mask covered his face.

It wasn't an ordinary gas mask.

The lenses reflected almost no light beneath the room's lamps, yet from inside they provided exceptionally clear vision.

A miniature data terminal was integrated into the side of the mask, projecting semi-transparent readings across his field of view.

Temperature.

Humidity.

Coil resistance.

Frame stress distribution.

Virgil had specifically requested the outfit himself.

He didn't want anyone watching a Super Mutant perform work requiring the most delicate fingers and the sharpest mind imaginable.

Even he found the contrast absurd.

Sturges crouched beside Virgil, holding a portable scanner.

"Connection seventeen complete."

Virgil's voice came from behind the gas mask, slightly muffled by its filter.

Sturges glanced down at the scanner readings.

"You've been going for three days straight. Want to take a break?"

Virgil didn't answer.

He had already started work on the next connection, the mechanical arm behind him moving nimbly through the inside of the frame.

Against the wall of the experimental area, Nate sat at a metal table maintaining his pistol, apparently paying no attention to Virgil's work.

Perched on his shoulder, however, was a raven with a complete coat of sleek, glossy feathers.

It was the "pet" he'd caught a few days earlier.

It was remarkably intelligent.

Perhaps a little too intelligent.