Fallout - Chapter 144: Loosening (Patreon)

Nuka-World.

To the southwest of Nuka-Town USA, east of the Hubologist’s camp, lay a vast expanse of fallow farmland.

Roughly 362 acres, almost as large as Nuka-Town USA itself. The fields had clearly been abandoned for a long time; only a few blades of Razorgrain remained in the plow furrows, barely clinging to life amid the encroaching weeds. The edges of the Razorgrain leaves were serrated with a steel-gray hue; when the afternoon sun hit them, they cast a faint metallic sheen. They were spindly, but still standing.

The rest of the area was overrun with weeds in shades of withered yellow, gray-green, and dark brown, sprouting wildly from the plow furrows, swallowing the once-neat ridges into a shaggy wasteland. The grass stalks lay flat in the wind in vast swaths, then sprang back up, like some giant beast with soiled fur breathing slowly.

A red tractor was parked at the edge of the field, its hood propped open. The emblem of some pre-War farm still clung to the door, though the lettering had been worn down by wind and sand to just a few blurred letters.

Jace, dressed in a Minutemen uniform, had half his body leaning into the engine compartment, a wrench wedged against a rusted-solid nut.

Metal scraped against metal, emitting a shrill, grating sound. The nut had been caked with rust and oil sludge into an irregular lump; its edges had long since been worn smooth, and the wrench would slip off several times before finally catching hold.

With every slip, the steel teeth plowed a new white groove into the nut’s surface, exposing the layer of rust sealed beneath the sludge.

Josie watched from the side for a moment.

Her rifle was slung across her arm, its muzzle pointing downward, her fingers resting loosely on the forend. But at that moment, her toes unconsciously pointed toward the southeast, toward the Commonwealth.

“Adjustable wrench.”

Jace’s voice came from the engine compartment, muffled.

Josie rummaged through the toolbox, pulled out an adjustable wrench, and handed it over.

“General, the Brotherhood of Steel has already made their move. Aren’t we going back to help?”

The creaking sound of the wrench turning the nut paused for a moment, then resumed.

“No need. Maxson isn’t as stupid in military matters as he is in politics. He knows when to strike and when to pull back.”

“What I mean is,” Josie paused, choosing her words carefully,

“Bringing down the Institute is a major achievement. Isn’t sending just a few veterans to infiltrate it a bit too little? Our Minutemen aren’t making a big enough show of force.”

The sound of the wrench stopped.

Jace straightened up from the engine compartment and wiped the engine oil off his fingers with a grayish rag. The rag was covered in dark brown oil stains; its original color was long since unrecognizable.

He could tell Josie was a bit annoyed that the Brotherhood of Steel was stealing the spotlight.

“Preston, what do you think?”

Preston stood behind the tractor, holding an open maintenance manual. The pages were yellowed, the corners frayed, and several had been soaked in engine oil, the text blurred into dark, smudged patches.

“As long as we can get rid of that ‘man-eater’ at the Institute, I don’t care who takes the credit. Besides, General, since you’ve focused your main forces on Nuka-World rather than the Commonwealth… you must have your own reasons.”

Jace draped the rag over the radiator cap and turned to Josie.

“Josie.”

“Do you know what happened on the West Coast in 2246?”

Josie thought back to the files she’d reviewed.

“Did the NCR and the Brotherhood of Steel join forces to take down the Enclave?”

Jace’s voice was steady, as if he were stating a confirmed fact.

“Yes. That year, the NCR had just pushed its territory north of New California, and the two sides joined forces to attack the Enclave’s Navarro military base.

The battle raged for three full months. The NCR Cavalry Division spent twelve days grinding it out in the desert on the outskirts of Navarro, while the Brotherhood of Steel’s power armor suits stormed the main gate.

Both sides were nearly bled dry.”

He paused. Josie noticed that his gaze wasn’t fixed on the tractor, but was instead fixed beyond the field ridge, at the point where the wild grass met the sky in the distance.

“After winning the Enclave War, the two sides immediately turned on each other over the division of spoils.

The Brotherhood of Steel’s Scribes simply packed up the vast majority of Navarro’s research data and core equipment and shipped it to the Lost Hills bunker at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. They didn’t even give the NCR a chance to look at it. They sealed the boxes, loaded the trucks, and left overnight. All they left the NCR was a pile of damaged, irreparable scrap.

NCR leadership was furious, accusing the Brotherhood of Steel of breaking their word; the Brotherhood of Steel scoffed that the NCR wasn’t worthy of advanced technology. The two sides immediately turned on each other and began stabbing each other in the back.

The end result was:

The West Coast Brotherhood was crippled and retreated into their bunker; if no one had given them a hand, it would have been only a matter of time before they died out.

The NCR’s gold reserves were looted, causing the value of the NCR dollar to plummet, and the Wastelanders went back to using caps.”

“Josie, tell me. After we take down the Institute, what do we do next?”

Josie hardly hesitated.

“Wipe out the Raiders and Gunners, and take over Vault 88 near Quincy.”

“And then?”

Josie opened her mouth.

And then?

The Raiders are cleared out. The Gunners are scattered. Vault 88 is secured. And then? Who’s going to take care of those liberated settlements? Who’s going to farm those uncultivated fields?

After the war is over, how do we turn this war-torn place into a place where people can actually live?

A gust of wind blew through again, making the overgrown grass rustle. The jagged blades of Razorgrain scraped against one another in the wind, emitting a faint metallic sound.

Jace’s voice was steady and measured.

“Then it’s time to start farming. We need to develop industry and agriculture.”

He raised his hand and pointed to the roughly 362 acres of fallow land before him.

“To develop these things, we’ll need not only Vault 88’s Smart Workshop, but also the Institute’s scientific and technological expertise. Specifically, the vast majority of it.”

Josie furrowed her brow.

“But how does all this… relate to us giving the credit to the Brotherhood of Steel?”

“Maxson might not object to sharing technology. He understands the concept of ‘mutual benefit.’ But his followers might not.

The Scribes and Elders of the Brotherhood of Steel share the same dogma as their predecessors in Lost Hills two hundred years ago, ‘Technology is the root cause of the destruction of human civilization; only the Brotherhood of Steel is qualified to safeguard it and decide who may use it.’

Maxson can suppress those voices for now, but he can’t do it forever. Those voices are repeated over and over again in the mess hall, in the lines at the armory, and during every pre-battle prayer.

If we storm the Institute alongside them and haul away that equipment, today we’re allies, tomorrow we’ll be ‘thieves stealing the Brotherhood of Steel’s spoils,’ and the day after tomorrow, someone will start shooting at us from the shadows.”

Preston’s eyebrow twitched as he looked up from the maintenance manual.

“You mean…”

“It doesn’t have to come to that between us and the Brotherhood of Steel,” Jace’s voice steadied.

“What Maxson needs is prestige, so the Brotherhood of Steel’s chroniclers can record that ‘the Brotherhood stormed the Institute and saved the Commonwealth Wasteland.’ He needs that public credit to silence the dissent within his ranks.

What we need is substance: the Institute’s technology, data, the things that will truly allow us to gain a foothold.

In the Brotherhood of Steel’s hands, that data would be locked away deep in a bunker; in ours, it can become modified blueprints for tractor engines, filtration schemes for water purifiers, and breeding data for next season’s Razorgrain crop.”

The wind picked up again. This time it was a bit stronger, causing the jagged leaves of Razorgrain to rustle loudly. Those few spindly stalks of Razorgrain bent and sprang back up, bent and sprang back up, amidst a sea of weeds.

Preston fell silent for a few seconds, unable to resist a sigh of admiration.

“Maxson sure is lucky. He’s got the Lone Wanderer backing him in the Capital Wasteland. And a general backing him in the Commonwealth.”

Jace bent down again, reached into the engine compartment, and the wrench once more clamped onto that rusted-solid nut.

“Yeah. He does seem to have fate on his side.”

The sound of the wrench turning resumed. Creak, creak, creak. Amid the screech of metal grinding against metal, the rusted nut finally began to loosen.

At first, it was slow; each turn yielded only a minuscule angle, as the wrench’s steel teeth kept slipping off the nut. But with each turn, it moved a little further than the last.

Rust flakes rained down from the edge of the nut, scattering across the red sheet metal as a small pile of dark red powder that kept growing, like a small heap of dried blood.

Finally, click. The nut came loose. Jace’s fingers spun the wrench rapidly, unscrewing the nut from the bolt.

He held it in his palm and examined it, a lump of rust and grease, its edges long since worn smooth, its six sides now indistinguishable from one another.

He tossed it into the toolbox; metal clanged against metal with a jingle.

Then he reached for the next one.

...

On the other side.

The Commonwealth. The Institute.

Nora, holding little Shaun, approached the main gate.

The hallway widened here. The ceiling rose from the standard three meters to nearly five, and the walls changed from composite panels to dark gray metal armor plating.

The lighting remained soft, but as it fell on the metal surfaces, it cast a cool, bluish glow, as if some of the warmth had been drained from the air. The scent in the air was different, too. No smell of burning, no scent of blood, only medical alcohol and a faintly sweet, ozone-like odor.

Guards stood on either side of the door. The muzzles of their combat rifles were lowered, angled diagonally toward the ground. The red glow of optical sensors shone steadily behind their face masks.

They watched the mother and son before them.

The woman’s breathing was slightly labored. Anyone would be out of breath after running that far down the hallway while carrying a ten-year-old child. But she held the child steadily.

The boy had buried his face in her shoulder, his arms wrapped tightly around her neck, his ten fingers interlaced at the nape of her neck. Nora could feel the knuckles of those small fingers pressing against her cervical vertebrae. His body was trembling slightly, so faintly that only the person holding him could detect it.

A guard spoke up.

“Excuse me. What model are you two?”

Nora looked up.

“Companion model.”

Her voice was steady. No tremor, no unnecessary pauses, no explanations.

She didn’t even look at the guard’s reaction. Her gaze had already shifted to the door behind him, as if her identity had never been in doubt.

The guards fell silent for a moment.

The guard who had asked the question lowered his head and glanced at the rifle in his hands. Then he flipped it over, the stock facing outward, and handed it to her.

“Go on in. Keep it clean. We didn’t see a thing.”

Nora took the rifle and slipped it beneath her coat. Without a word, she walked between the two guards, still holding little Shaun.

The door closed slowly behind her.

Inside was a short connecting corridor, no more than seven or eight steps long. A wall-mounted terminal was embedded on each side of the corridor; the screen brightness was set very low, and pale green characters flickered slowly against the dark background. The floor was covered with light gray carpet that made no sound underfoot.

She set little Shaun down on the floor. The boy’s legs were a little wobbly, and it took him a moment to steady himself. His palms pressed against the wall, leaving a few small, blurry fingerprints on the dark gray metal armor plate. Nora bent down in front of the terminal, pressed her fingers against the keyboard, and began her search.

The most recent medical log popped up. Father’s condition had worsened due to emotional distress. Multi-organ failure had reached its terminal stage.

She located the Father’s whereabouts.

Top floor, Director’s private quarters. Medical bed. Life-support pod.

Nora stared at the line of text on the screen and paused for about two seconds. The cursor on the screen flickered slowly before her, like a quiet eye that refused to go out.

She shut down the terminal, picked up little Shaun, and continued on her way.

The air in the top-floor corridor was different from the air below.

It was quieter here. It was as if the room itself were holding its breath, waiting for something to happen.

Hanging on the walls on both sides of the corridor were several holographic picture frames depicting pre-War Boston streetscapes: red brick buildings, green trees, and blue skies. But every ten or so seconds, the images would flicker, briefly distorting into a grayish-white snowstorm, like an old television with a poor signal.

After the snow cleared, the images returned. They still showed those brick buildings, trees, and skies, but with each restoration, the leaves on the trees seemed to be a little fewer than before.

It was as if that world, too, were slowly falling apart.

She found the room.

The door was made of heavy metal, its surface coated in dark gray matte paint. A pale blue seal ran around the doorframe, standard equipment for medical isolation zones. The door wasn’t completely shut, leaving a gap about two fingers wide. Pale yellow light seeped through the crack, casting a thin beam onto the floor.

Nora stood in front of the door. She set little Shaun down on the floor and motioned for him to stay by the wall. The boy crouched against the wall, hugging his knees, and looked into her eyes.

She pressed her ear against the door’s crack.

The Father’s voice came from inside the life-support pod.

Weak and hoarse. Each word was separated by a labored breath. The ventilator’s air pump hummed constantly in the background; the steady, rhythmic sound of air pressure was like some kind of countdown clock.

“So this is how it ends after all.”

“In the end, you’ve chosen to destroy with your own hands everything I’ve spent my life striving for. You’re making an irreversible mistake. The surface is completely dead. There’s no future to speak of.”

Then another voice spoke up.

“Yes.”

“The Commonwealth’s urban areas lie in ruins. Ruins, crumbling walls, and a sky filled with gray, radioactive dust stretch as far as the eye can see.”

“But why is that?”

“Because you’ve repeatedly blocked the Commonwealth’s revival.

Decapitating settlement representatives; preventing the formation of the Commonwealth’s provisional government;

carrying out targeted infiltrations to replace residents and paralyze local governance;

and, over the long term, releasing FEV virus test subjects and modified organisms onto the Commonwealth’s surface to reduce the surface population.”

Nora heard an extremely faint sound, like the friction of a finger slowly scraping across a metal surface.

“For two hundred years, you’ve strangled to death, time and again, anything that tried to come back to life.

And now you stand here, looking at the ruins you created with your own hands and declare that the surface is completely dead, with no future whatsoever.”

“How can you say that, Shaun?”

Nora’s pupils contracted sharply.

Five fingers froze on the doorknob. The metal knob felt cold and hard in the palm of her hand. Those holographic frames in the hallway still flickered every ten or so seconds, turning the blue sky of pre-War Boston into snowflakes inch by inch.

But those voices had all receded.

They had receded to a place far, far away.

Only that one sentence remained in her mind.

Was that Shaun?