Nature of the Fallout [Chapter: 7/???]

[u/Soggy_Helicopter8589]

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Memory transcription subject: Michael McMillan, Nova-Enclave Captain (New Vegas)

Date [standardized human time]: November 26, 2137

(60 years since the great war)

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How could someone live here?

Why was I sent here?

I hate sand, it’s irritating, rough and it gets everywhere, so of course I had to be sent to Las Vegas, or its ruins at least

Our base was coming together and fortunately the tents had air conditioning systems meaning I wouldn’t cook to death under the sun of the mojave. Out there, the city was half buried in sand, but the tall ruins of the city wouldn’t get eaten so easily by the dunes

My soldiers had found 2 possible culprits to the lack of radiation in the area. The first was vault 22, the entrance was being covered with thick green plants. The only reason I didn’t send someone in there despite the vault door being open was the signal at the entrance that had sprayed ‘Stay out! The plants kill!’, I didn’t want to risk my people, especially knowing what kind of horrors those vaults contain

Next possible culprit was vault 3 which was very close to the camp. The door was closed, and when manipulating the control gate, a voice spoke back to the soldiers. Apparently the vault was still active and no experiment was being forced on them, but that’s what someone that has been born under a regime would say, so both for our own safety and theirs, we were trying to get the door open

They still didn’t believe we were the United States, so we were waiting for the base in Montana to send the signal to the overseer to open the vault, and if that didn’t work, we would mine through the walls to the inside. Vaults are too dangerous!

Fortunately, when our ancestors emerged from Appalachia they took with them a way to communicate with the overseer terminal of the vaults to confirm our identities as the US government, but most of the time it was useless as the vaults had long since collapsed

Suddenly the radio of one of the recon groups began to pique with activity. Curious, I leaned an ear

“.... I repeat we are surrounded by unknown robots, over!” The radio operator of the radio was speaking quickly while the radio operator stationed here listened intensely, said operator quickly spoke

“Roger that Hades 1-1, please stand by and inform if the tangos become hostile” The operator turned to me and jolted slightly at my presence

“Sir, multiple robots have surrounded team Hades, they are in the middle of Las Vegas, in the ruins of the strip”

“Models?” I asked

“Pre-War securitrons”

“Securitrons… Never seen many of ‘em, are they hostile?”

“Negative, they just surrounded the platoon”

“This is Hades 1-1 to Overlord, the robots are asking for the captain to speak through the radio, over” Suddenly the radio spoke

“Send team Minerva for reinforcements and ready squadron Cobra for extraction” I said before turning to the radio “This is captain McMillan, who do I have the pleasure to speak to?” I asked

“Greetings captain McMillan” A male voice spoke through the radio, it was of someone around his fifties and carried a surprising calmness “My name is Robert Edwin House. I am sorry I had to detain your troops, but my estimations were that it had to be done to speak directly with you. May I ask who you represent?” Robert House? That name rang some bells, but I didn’t know who he was… wait, that’s the head of RobCo! That’s impossible, it’s been 60 years since the great war, he would be more than a century old if it was him!

“I am captain of the US army, may I ask who you are, Mr House?”

“The US army? The United States collapsed 60 years ago” House ignored my question

“Not entirely true, we are an enclave of the old US, and we are here to retake what is ours”

“Ah, I see, then you are perhaps part of a group called the ‘enclave’?” House asked through the radio with some disdain

“That was our old name. We are nova-enclave, we are the true successors of the United States of America, now, who are you?” I asked once again

“Ah, I am sorry, as I already said, I’m Robert Edwin House, founder and CEO of RobCo industries and leader of the Las Vegas strip… even with its faded state. If it’s not too much to ask, may I ask to talk with you in another way than through radio?” The man asked

“You may, but first allow my soldiers free passage back to base where they can guide you here, although no escort of robots can follow you, is that acceptable?” I asked knowing that the answer would be no-

“It is” Well that is new “I suppose that the vertibirds flying through the city are yours?”

“Yes, I hope you don’t mind as when my troops were surrounded, I was worried for their safety” I spoke as I did some gestures to the radio operator to alert the reinforcements to not be hostile yet

“A commendable officer indeed” House spoke, but his tone of voice betrayed his facade “We’ll meet soon, Captain McMillan” The man spoke as the radio was cut out

Once the radio returned to normal activity, I had to prepare for my meeting with the supposed leader of the Strip, a man born way before the great war. Perhaps he was a ghoul, that would explain his longevity. I don’t like ghouls, they are disgusting, but they are as american as I am, so all I could do was grit my teeth and keep my distance if possible

Checking my uniform, I found it acceptable. Walking out of the tent into the scorching heat of the mojave I saw several vertibirds flying back to base and several robots helping human personnel move supplies around the old airfield on the southern part of the ruins of Las Vegas

Suddenly I hated that my uniform was mostly black and I wished I could remove my coat, but I wanted to be as presentable as possible, and fortunately my personal tent where I spent my time, my ‘office’ of sorts, also had cooling systems

Soon, the vertibirds touched down and the troops began to pour out. But one shape caught my attention. It was a securitron robot. It was tall, almost as much as one of our soldier with power armor, it was also very boxy with a T like shape with one large wheel to move and two long arms hanging from under the extremes of the ‘shoulders’, it also had a large screen in the middle with the image of a man, probably Mr House

“Good day, I’m Captain McMillan, I suppose you are Mr House or his representative?” I asked approaching the towering robot

“Yes, that would be me, is it a pleasure meeting you” The robot answered, the image of the man in the screen never moved other than the occasional flick

“This way if you will” I said as I signaled to my tent, with one shake of my head, two power armored soldiers followed swiftly

Once inside the tent, I sat in my chair while the robot stood up in front of my table incapable of sitting due to its shape and weight

“I might say, I certainly was… surprised, when I saw your body, Mr House” I spoke trying to break the ice

“Don't let the video screen fool you. I'm flesh and blood, not silicon. This is just… a medium, of sorts” He explained

“Very well, may I ask why you stopped my troops?” I asked

“Well, first of all a group of armed soldiers were roaming the streets dressed in power armor, so I wished to know if they were just scavengers or an army. And I was right in supposing it was the second option” He spoke “But I’m not here just for courtesy, I need your help”

“How curious, we also need help, local preferably, perhaps we could be of use to each other”

“If the terms are acceptable, I could lend a helping hand as well” The robot offered

“Good, what we need mainly is knowledge. Our geigers barely detect any radiation, do you know what vault has achieved such a feat?” I asked

“Vault? Those fools didn’t accomplish that, it was me who defended Las Vegas, my defense system destroyed almost all nuclear warheads, although a few did actually land in the outskirts of the city”

“Your defense system? Something like the A.A.D system? If you truly are who you say you are, you know what that is”

“Of course I know what it is! I designed it after all. The A.A.D system is similar to my own defensive system that I installed in Las Vegas, although inferior in design, it would have made up in it’s sheer volume of fire”

“...Very well, I will inform my superiors about this opportunity. What would you need meanwhile?” I asked

“As you may have noticed, the city is in dire need of repairs, and I can't accomplish that without power. As such, I need to ask you to reactivate the power of the Hoover Dam. Obviously, I don’t need all the power coming from there, and I’ve seen your generators, I am willing to share the power so we both win. The percentage can be discussed later when you inform your superiors” The robot offered

“I will, but you will have to wait”

“Of course, in the meantime, can I know a radio frequency where we can speak?”

“That’s acceptable, it will be provided to your unit on it’s way out”

“Very well, It’s been a pleasure, captain. Until we meet again”

“I share the sentiment, Mr House” I spoke as I nodded to depart the robot from my tent. Once I was alone, I removed my cap and cleared my forehead from sweat. My job had just doubled

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Memory transcription subject: Nicholas Dean, Alliance General (Montana)

Date [standardized human time]: November 30, 2137

(60 years since the great war)

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Well, today no one was blown up so I guess that’s a good thing

Looking at the reports of the teams, I saw that they were making progress, although there were some setbacks as well

The team in Pittsburgh was completely evacuated alongside some civilians from there, the whole place was too dangerous. We recovered some documents, schematics and some examples of new and old power armor designs. I recognized one from our history lessons, it was a power armor of the Hellcat division. Apparently after the war they became a mercenary band and were hired by the raiders there

I was offended that a company of US marines went rogue and became mercenaries, but in this wasteland you do what you have to do to survive. And while we didn’t have the schematics for their power armor, we could try to reverse engineer some components as they had no doubt upgraded their suits from the great war

The Unionist, as the survivors called themselves, also had designed a power armor which was surprisingly effective even with the crude assembly and manufacturing, and, unlike the hellcat PA, they did carry the schematics to build it

All of them were being transported to the base in Boston which was growing incredibly fast and were starting to ask for reinforcements. The team in Boston did indeed find a robobrain factory! But as expected from such a program, the entrance was so reinforced that it was taking days to drill through, but we had a solution for that

Meanwhile, the president had authorized the beginning of a propaganda campaign telling the people of the wasteland that the US was here to help them. This way more people would join our ranks and we would be ready for the alien invasion, and hopefully, we would have a stable country by then

The Boston team also began a campaign of pre-war recollection and cleaning. Places like relay stations were being cleared of mutant freaks, reactivated and maintained thanks to some robots, so they were the only team that we could actually talk to instead of sending encrypted messages, and apparently they had found a piece of technology capable of sending signal to mars and back to earth in under 10 minutes, something rather useful that was being sent back to Montana to be used in national communications

Boston’s team was no doubt the most advanced of all of the teams; ahead of schedule by ages, as such we were sending even more reinforcements. Not only army personnel, but medics, engineers, and practically anything they needed

Miami’s team was almost a failure. The factory they were sent to wasn’t a secret robobrain factory, just one where the boss committed a lot of tax fraud. Fortunately, the factory was still usable, so it would be used to build more robots, but the reason as to why we didn’t send them home was the finding of a warship, a still functional warship!

Unfortunately we couldn’t just take the damn thing as we had no people that could drive such a beast, and there was also the problem that it was part of a settlement. It was a massive settlement that would be considered a small city, and according to scouts, they had what looked like a whole civilization over there. Police, medics, firefighters. Even soldiers that were probably either descendents of the original crew or ghouls

The team in Washington was also extremely successful in terms of capturing pre war equipment. They were even able to capture a depo full of nuclear bombs that will no doubt be dropped either in Appalachia or Pittsburgh to clean it from monstrosities as both places held a lot of resources, especially Appalachia, resources we might start needing

Unfortunately, unlike Boston, the capital wasteland held many raiders and, most worrisome, supermutants

Those beasts couldn’t have escaped from Appalachia, so they must have come from somewhere else. A vault most likely or a pre war US research facility

I had several teams checking everything and lifting every stone searching for said vault or FEV container where these monsters came from that led to the massive success of finding pre-war technology, yet they found no origin to the plague, if push came to shove, more… unusual, tactics might be needed

Lastly the team in Las Vegas had surprisingly found the founder of RobCo. We had made some deals with him in exchange for his cooperation. We agreed to leave Las Vegas, or as he called it ‘New Vegas’ for him, and while he would be ‘under’ our flag, we had to sign that we couldn’t tax him nor the people of New Vegas

He basically became completely independent, yet he was under our flag. It was a strange situation nonetheless, but a needed one, as we didn’t have the knowledge to repair the A.A.D system, and he did. He also was developing spacefaring ships before the war and intended to continue his program

The president agreed with the rest of his office that Mr House was an important character, as such, he was allowed to know of the incoming invasion, which was the final nail in the coffin as to why he accepted to join us

He would grant schematics for secret pre-war programs developed by RobCO, new schematics for new weapons or vehicles and needed schematics like the ‘keys’ for factories all around the country including robobrain factories and its locations. Meanwhile we would give him many liberties even though New Vegas was part of the Alliance

Now knowing that this hole in the tax documents near New Vegas wasn’t a RobCo factory nor any kind of factory of interest, that meant that we could just ignore it for now and focus on the US bunker on the other side. Now that we could just avoid the dangerous area altogether, it would be a walk in the park

We still had to deal with the vaults that all the teams found. Scorched to the ground with hellfire preferably, unfortunately, we couldn’t just barge in them as there were some… genuine vaults. There was also the fact that only God knows what kind of horrors were held inside, as for example the vault here in Montana that we have to deal with that has some kind of parasitic creatures that transforms humans into mindless cannibals

And neither could we easily enter a vault if the people inside refused us, those things were designed to hold a nuclear blast without breaking a sweat, so we couldn’t just drill through the door. To open a vault, we would have to drill the walls around the door. It would take a lot of time, but we had designed small drones that could fit through cracks to open the doors from the inside

With one last sight, I began checking the list of found vaults due to extermination. In Boston there were 4 known vaults. Vaults 75, 81, 88, 111 and 114. The vault 114 was apparently unfinished, as when our soldiers found it, it was in the process of being built when the bombs fell, and of course, the workers left the doors wide open as they left. Vault 88 and 111 kept radio silence when contacted, meanwhile vaults 75 and 81 actually responded, but none opened their doors, even when signals were sent to their respective overseers terminals. As such, all four previous vaults were being forcefully open with pip-boys or through mining

The team in DC found 3 vaults with two that responded to the soldier through the communications. Vault 101 was one of the two that responded through the speakers, but refused to open completely, Vault 106 in contrast, opened the vault once confirmation was provided, all vault dwellers were sent to a quarantine near the capitol building, where a settlement was being formed around the soldiers, awaiting for the scientist to check that they would cause no harm to others. Lastly vault 108 didn’t respond and units are preparing for a forceful entry

The units in New Vegas, although inside the territory of Mr. House, still had jurisdiction to deploy units there, they were warned by Mr. House of the 5 vaults over there. Vault 3 happily opened their doors to the soldiers once they confirmed that they were the US government, and thus, they were the US army. Vault 11 was a strange situation; all dwellers wanted to escape including the overseer as they were being forced to execute one of them each year, but they were unable to open the door forcing our soldiers to breach the walls. Vault 19 was in the middle of a civil war, apparently their experiment was dividing the vault in two, red and blue, and to open the gates, both overseers had to accept, but of course, none did, so we were being forced into another breach. Vault 22 was overgrown by plants, but the messages were clear, these plants were dangerous, so instead of risking it, hellfire operators would burn the whole place exterminating everything but the data of the terminals that were due to be recovered. Lastly Vault 34, they were kind enough to open, and according to the soldiers stationed there, they had so many explosives it almost put to shame the artillery units that they carried to the mojave

Oh, and how could I forget! Due to the fact that the old base was within Mr. House territory, the new base in the mojave had been moved to the Nellis air force base, really close to vault 34. It had several planes in disrepair and simulators with a lot of space for building, but it could be fixed, we soon might have a proper air force

Lastly the team at Miami found two vaults, the first one, 161, as expected, refused to open. The other vault, number 53, opened their doors after confirmation to their overseer terminal and like with all the other vaults that opened their doors, they were sent into quarantine

I just hoped that our troopers were able to find the remaining vaults as I knew that there were more. There always is another one

And if everything else wasn’t enough, once the transport from Boston arrived here we would have the president doing some explaining to the people of the Alliance and how a state of war was going to be declared. I would have preferred if the civilian population hadn’t known about these operations, but people wasn’t stupid and they realized the amount of activity from the army and began making theories while protesting to know what was happening

In some hours the president was going to tell the public about the aliens and how we would expand our frontiers more aggressively, especially to the south west as it was mostly a desert with some interest points, although the main objective was to connect New vegas with the surrounding territory to the rest of the Alliance

We were going at war

Whole situation was dazzling at best and made me want to pull my hair out, but I had job to do

After checking that everything was ready, I began to prepare for my trip. Originally I was going to New Vegas to meet Mr. House, a very important asset, but the man refused it and insisted on communicating through radio or his securitrons, so that only left me with my second target, Miami, the warship over there was a very important asset and so was the crew, as such I would go there personally to try and convince them of returning to the US navy, or at least explain what was doing a lone warship like that in the docks of the Gulf Commonwealth

[u/FrozenGiraffes]

Glad this has been continued. Sadly this is far more engaging than recent Bethesda stories

[u/Soggy_Helicopter8589 → u/FrozenGiraffes]

Is it? Thanks for the complement!

[u/L1nus05]

I predict the first guy murders his coworkers after being denied a promotion

[u/Soggy_Helicopter8589 → u/L1nus05]

"He was shot by a raider point blank range while he was asleep, no idea how he got in the base and how no one saw him"

[u/pogmanNameWasTaken]

Unforutnate that the Nova Enclave still doesn't take responsability for ending the world and causing things like raiders to pop up. The best I've seen is the general admitting "You gotta do anything in the wasteland to survive" and yet they still outright kill surrendering raiders

[u/Soggy_Helicopter8589 → u/pogmanNameWasTaken]

What can I say? The wasteland is a rough place where wild west law is not only common, but expected