Part of the preparations for the impending war against the Brotherhood of Steel involved the Nexus securing more of the Commonwealth. We’ve pretty much leveled and developed the ruins within our borders, even clearing out the subway systems and incorporating it into the existing rail network. While they weren’t exactly skyscrapers, our new buildings rose up to a respectable height of at most twenty floors for now, mostly sparsely spaced apartments.
Further expansion was to thicken the corridor between Boston and the Glowing Sea and round off the borders a bit more. It was less a necessary security measure and more of wanting to make our maps look nicer, I admit. The operation was without much incidents, the odd remnants of raiders and super mutants easily cleared off and isolated settlements just as easily vassalized or outright assimilated.
Thanks to the ruined state of things, it allowed for a complete rebuilding of the infrastructure, down to the underground wiring I had planned. Running alongside our new roads were fusion-powered, Zetan enhanced trams with stations at regular intervals. I didn’t bother reviving the automotive industry for now, as I still wanted more bots instead. So public transport would have to do, unless people decided to take the initiative and start up their own auto industry (no requests yet, sadly).
Actual green parks were also regularly set up around the residential areas, mostly because it’s a good reminder of how great the Nexus is to have clean greenery in the first place, and also because they weren’t a major drain on resources whether people used them or not. It’s just a park, and the post-apocalypse citizens appreciated the green plants to the point of revering them, so risks of vandalism and such would be low.
While things were moving smoothly in the coming war against the Brotherhood of Steel, the Nexus was also taking care of Enclave teams we’ve spotted inching towards our borders. These were moving too cautiously and too carefully to be defectors, and after I sent the companies to give them a check,it was confirmed that I was looking at at least two rival factions within the Enclave seeking to infiltrate us.
All of the would-be infiltrators were sent to Tleilax for a more thorough investigation, and for testing the latest iteration of the unethical synth chips. It was far from a proper mind control chip, but Curie had gone through the reports and assured me that it would do a good job at forcing temporary compliance for expendable prisoners.
Basically, we could force out the truth to prisoners and then recycle them into fertilizer once the chips inevitably burnt out their synapses. Still unethical as fuck, but Blacksite Tleilax was supposed to be the shadowed gauntlet of the Nexus, so…go crimes against humanity.
A clearer picture was eventually obtained from the freely given information from the Enclave defectors and the not-so-freely pried answers from the prisoners. There were Enclave bases somewhere west and south in New York, as well as maybe an outpost or five in Connecticut and Rhode Island. Nothing north of us, so far as we gathered, which is nice I guess.
Seeing that the Enclave presence was closer to us than the BoS, they had been volunteered to field test some of the new advances in tech and strategy. The 1st, 2nd and the new 3rd Companies would be conducting training, along with the participation of those former Brotherhood members under Lyons. It was agreed that the Enclave defectors would not join in for now, mostly so they wouldn’t have to feel conflicted or such about shooting at former colleagues.
At her insistent request, Nat went along as well with some of her classmates, under the protection and command of Edward. Piper, Cait and Curie would join in as well in their own unit.
*****
Seeing firsthand what exactly Sev was deploying for his ‘training’ operation gave Sarah and her former Brotherhood brothers and sisters conflicted feelings. On the one hand, it was good to see such advancements working for furthering the uplifting of humanity, and that they could be a part of it like Owyn Lyons had envisioned.
But knowing that eventually the arsenal on display would be turned on their former colleagues, former brothers and sisters… Knowing that the Brotherhood of Steel might become thoroughly extinct because of the looming war didn’t sit too well with any of Lyon’s group. It was regrettable that the Brotherhood would likely refuse any terms Sev would insist on for any sort of cooperation.
The blinkered path of self-importance and denial that the Brotherhood of Steel had so arrogantly walked would damn them to annihilation, and it would likely be completely their fault.
Sarah shook away the dark thoughts as she watched a wave of Prism fighters launch off the Kirov’s bays, followed by the Quetzal transports. It was an awesome sight, to see completely new technology being wielded instead of reusing and upgrading pre-war equipment.
This particular attack would be on a series of outposts and bunkers to the south of the Nexus, in what was once the state of Rhode Island. The plan was to carry out a chain of attacks, starting from the west-most base, and then hopping to the next base, rinsing and repeating until they finished at the last bunker at the east coast.
Sarah would be staying to oversee operations in the Kirov as the mighty airship lazily floated over the area of operations above the clouds. She was still getting used to the disembodied inputs from Eva and Kirov, but promised herself that the strategy she had devised would not fail.
Everything must be carried out perfectly here if she wanted to enjoy a thorough dicking by Sev later.
Eyebots kept track of the aircrafts as they descended on the first target. The Prisms started things off with a strafing run with Ix’s new generation of plasma weaponry. These new cannons had more efficient and effective electromagnetic barrel sheaths, allowing for tighter, more focused subatomic rounds hurled out at faster speeds.
What truly mattered to Sev when he announced it though, was that the new plasma cannons fired blue bolts instead of green. He had proudly called this new technology ‘Particle Projector Cannons’, or PPCs.
These PPCs were utterly devastating to the reinforced pre-war bunker and the base built around it, the first salvo completely cratering the target area. With the Prisms done, the Quetzals hovered above the smoking ruins and the Companies began jumped down, the Sardaukar-pattern power armor making a twenty foot landing a non-issue.
Sarah followed the reports coming in and kept track of the live updates on the holographic map Kirov had helpfully set up. Eva also chimed in to update on the Prisms sweeping the area for stragglers.
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“2nd Company to command, confirming no active threats in northern sector. Four prisoners for retrieval.”
“1st Company to command, confirming seven…wait, nine prisoners for retrieval. Rest are all corpses. Central zone is clear.”
“3rd Company to command, west sector clear, no viable prisoners, no signs of life.”
Everything was going smoothly, though that didn’t stop Sarah from feeling anxious. She watched and listened in as the companies converged towards the ruined underground entrance. The rubble was cleared out with a few laser beams, and 3rd Company went in.
They needed more experience, after all.
Enclave members were inevitably encountered, and the squads of 3rd did a respectable job of securing everyone last one of them as prisoners. The only injuries sustained in exchange were a sprained wrist from clumsy restraining, and some fool twisting their ankle trying to charge into melee.
As the bunker was cleared out, 1st and 2nd Companies re-embarked on their Quetzals and went to hit the next base. This time Sev’s girls joined in, soaring in the new Wraith-pattern power armor.
Suits that could actually fly, with wings of steel to guide them and levitation units to keep them in the air. And they were fully stealthed. If not for the ultra-high frequency IFF transponders, Sarah wouldn’t have known where to look for them. The three girls landed in the camp and collapsed the tunnels with their man-portable PPCs, then methodically crippled the surface defenders with white laser beams to the legs before the Quetzals came in.
Sarah reminded herself again to be grateful that she was not the one entering a war with the Nexus.
1st Company had the bunker this time, and as they cleared things underground, 2nd Company took to the skies to join with 3rd on the next base, which was already blitzed by the Prisms.
The Companies leap-frogged their way from bunker to bunker and camp to camp, each time sending Quetzals full of prisoners up to the Kirov for future processing. Sarah noticed how those taken from 1st Company tended to have less bruises and more missing limbs, testament to their clinically ruthless approach compared to the more traditional overpowering methods that 2nd and 3rd used.
Her own group of Brotherhood defectors were in the fray as well, scattered between the three Companies. From the snippets she listened in on, her brothers and sisters were providing valuable and practical tactical advice in the close-quarters fighting, and the commanders were making use of it to great effect.
Of course, 1st Company needed less guidance than the others, considering that they were the most fanatical of Sev's followers. Even Piper’s younger sister was down there with them, by all accounts grimly enjoying herself. Hearing their war cries through the comms, Sarah Lyons pitied the Enclave defenders facing Sev’s Own.
No landings or Prism air strikes were conducted on the last base, an almost derelict oil tanker anchored just off the coast. Instead, eyebots marked the massive rusting ship with infra-red lasers, and Sarah felt the Kirov rumble as its own guns finally got to come out to play.
“Weapon bays ready. Target acquired.”
Sarah watched the video feed from eyebots as the tanker floated lazily in one second, and was replaced by a quick series of explosions of radiated water and sand. She heard the faded shockwave seconds later.
A quick scan from eyebots and Sev’s girls confirmed no survivors from the concentrated strike of PPCs and hypervelocity rail cannons.
“Target removed. Secondary weapons trial successful.”
The Kirov sounded rather pleased with itself, and Sarah couldn’t blame it. If this was what the airship could do with it’s lesser armaments, she shuddered to think about what would warrant the use of its primary ones.
Well, at least this part of the operation had gone off without a hitch. Now to head west to clear out more Enclave bases and repeat the training process several more times.
Sarah felt her inner thighs itch at the prospect of finishing the whole operation quickly to get back to Sev. Just a few days of purging Enclave bases, and she could go back and sate her addiction to Sev’s cock. As much as she wanted to get things over with quickly, Sarah reminded herself to keep focused on the task. She had to make sure to do a good job, and show that she could follow orders, and be a good girl.
Sev only used good girls, after all.