The minute we reached the front parking lot, my group and I exited it and got on the road, heading for the Warrington Trainyard. We traveled for a while upon the aging asphalt roads, passing by dozens of buildings that were in various states falling apart and stages of decay. Continuing in our standard formation, the bunch of us eventually passed by Tenpenny Tower, and not too many minutes after that, our destination.
"Okay, you guys wait here while Amata and I go investigate to see if the Enclave are at the facility." I told my robots and Don, who just gave me a hand signal that meant he understood.
Leaving my main force behind, both Amata and I activated our power armors' stealth fields, turning ourselves invisible, although not to each other thanks to our power armors' built-in thermal vision. With our power armors' stealth fields activated, I kept my presence hiding field toggled on, took the lead again, and got back on the messed up roads going westward.
More than pumped for the mission ahead, the two of us sped off westward for the next few minutes until the road began curving to the northwest. Not needing to change route, we remained on the road we'd been using and kept following it for around 10 minutes when it split into a three-way, with one road leading north and the other going west. Which was the one we needed to take, and once we neared the three-way junction, I scanned the surrounding environment for hostiles and other possible dangers.
Doing that for a couple of moments, I didn't spot anything, so I kept pushing forward and took a left, heading straight west again. That branch eventually had us going southwest and after traveling on it for about 5 more minutes or so. As we got closer and closer to the destination, the eerie Dunwich Building came into view in the distance.
Yeah, we better stay away from the Dunwich Building for now, or at least until I have some actual understanding of the eldritch entity Ug-Qualtoth.
With the Dunwich Building nearby and it being known as a place related to dark magic and a supposed eldritch entity known as Ug-Qualtoth, we gave it a wide berth of space and sped by it quickly. Once we passed that haunted building and left it in our dust, we traveled for another 7 minutes and finally reached the vicinity of the Rockland Car Tunnel.
Nearly at our objective, I got us to stop for a moment. "Our destination is right in front of us, so hold up for a second."
"Sure thing." She replied simply.
Having come to a complete stop a ways away from the tunnel, I observed the area for all possible dangers and Enclave personnel. I examined the area around us, but I didn't spot anything other than the Rockland Car Tunnel being collapsed like it was in the game, and some wild dogs nearby chasing a radroach down a branching sound road.
"Alright, looks like there aren't any Enclave on the exterior of the tunnel, so let's move up and see if I can't detect any of them within."
"Okay, I'll be following your lead." She responded seriously.
With nothing to deal with in the vicinity, we rapidly moved in on the tunnel. When the two of us got relatively close to the maintenance door, I detected multiple Enclave soldiers inside equipped with X-02 Power Armor, AER9 Laser Rifles, Urban Plasma Rifles, as well as Plasma Grenades and Pulse Grenades with my perception field.
We have company just as expected.
Now that I knew the Enclave were indeed here, I turned back toward Amata and said. "There are several Enclave soldiers inside the tunnel, so they should have control of the Rockland Satellite Relay Station on the other side of the tunnel."
"It's a good thing we didn't come rolling up with the robots then. We definitely would've been spotted if we had."
"Probably." I responded before going over a few things with her.
"You got all that, Amata?"
"Yes."
"Alright, we're ready to begin the operation then. I'm going to place you up above in an elevated position just like we discussed, so you can provide overwatch for me while I infiltrate the facility to take control of it. Which they should be using to aim their Bradley-Hercules satellite."
"Okay, just make sure you retreat if you think the situation is too dangerous." Amata said seriously, unwilling to take no for an answer.
"Will do, and you make sure you don't start shooting and give away your position unless I tell you to." I replied, just as seriously.
Following our little conversation, I lightened my weight via my new Weight Management perk, grabbed my power armor equipped Amata, and started jumping up the rocky terrain. When I made it to the top of the steep rocky hill, which was at least eight stories up above where we were previously, I reset my weight to what it was moments ago and set my female partner down gently, so her armor wouldn't produce any noise. From there, we began traversing across the rocks heading west in the direction of the facility.
Around a minute later, we reached an area where we had a good view of the Rockland Satellite Relay Station. What came into view was a massive satellite installation with several huge satellite dishes scattered across the top of the main facility, as well as the surrounding rocky terrain right behind the facility to the north.
Aside from that, there were a number of large blue force fields set up via dozens of pylon generators, fortifications, and numerous laser turrets placed in elevated positions. As impressive as those defenses were, the military installation also possessed 3 Vertibird aircraft that were sitting in open spaces by the entrance of the station, and last but certainly not least 30 heavily armed Enclave soldiers, that were either patrolling the general area around the facility or taking up defensive positions behind their fortifications.
"Hmm, they have quite a large force guarding this facility."
"Will it be a problem?" My girl asked.
"No, it shouldn't be all that difficult to deal with them given our current capabilities, so just watch over the area whilst I'm inside wrestling control of the orbital weapons platform from them."
"Alright, I'll see you in a bit, then, Harold. Be careful in there and pull back if the situation looks to be shifting in their favor."
"Mm, I'll be back. Stay safe, Amata." I said lastly before taking off to infiltrate the Rockland Satellite Relay Station.
Walking off from Amata, I moved to the north and circled around the facility via my elevated position. The second I reached a halfway decent point that I could use to infiltrate the facility, I lightly and nimbly hopped from one large rock to another. This went on till I landed softly upon the roof of the mostly concrete facility, directly beside one of the humongous satellite dishes installed atop the relay station, all without making a sound.
From my landing, I walked around the roof of the place while utilizing my perception field to scan the interior of the structure. After doing that for a few minutes, I had a decent amount of the interior mapped out within my head. So with a pretty good idea of where I needed to go, I used my perk Ghost and phased through the roof of the station, and went on in whilst also remaining completely invisible to the Enclave troops and personnel within the military installation.
Once inside, I kept Ghost active and began exploring the many corridors and passed by numerous Enclave soldiers and personnel going about their business who were none the wiser of my presence. Slightly less than a dozen minutes later, I finished exploring the interior of the facility in its entirety, so I moved onto the next step of my operation and proceeded to where the control room was located.
The instant I arrived there, I deactivated Ghost and crept up behind the Enclave officer that was seated in front of the main console. Standing behind my prey, I electrified my power armor's right pointer finger with enough power and pressed it at the back of his neck, knocking him out almost instantly.
With the Enclave officer knocked out, I disarmed him of any weapons he had on his person, which consisted of a single Plasma Defender and 2 Plasma Grenades, and moved his chair out of the way of the main console. Following that, I walked over to the blast door, which was the only entrance to this control room, and took control of the door with Mechu-deru and sealed the door shut, preventing anyone from disturbing me whilst I was busy taking control over the Bradley-Hercules lying in space.
Now that I've secured the room, it's time to move on to ridding myself of another worry.
Ready to remove a weapon that could effortlessly extinguish my existence from my enemy's control, I passed by the passed-out Enclave officer and began taking control of the console via Mechu-deru. Exerting my will, I infected the machine and started bypassing and disabling the security measures and systems one by one in rapid succession. Making short work of it, I quickly had the console under my full and absolute control.
Let's see what's on this piece of old world tech.
Naturally curious about what the computer system had on its low capacity storage, I flew through the available information and discovered that the Enclave in and around the Capital Wasteland only had control over the one Bradley-Hercules satellite.
That's a bit unfortunate. I was really hoping the orbital weapons platform would have more than just two payloads. Sigh.
Although saddened by that fact, I didn't dwell on it and double checked that that was the only weapon of mass destruction they had in their arsenal. Luckily or unluckily that was the only one they had so after ensuring that was the only WMD they had control over, I continued utilizing Mechu-deru and stealthfully emitted a signal to the Bradley-Hercules satellite from the Rockland Satellite Relay Station, and hitched a ride on the signal.
Using that signal, my influence eventually arrived at the orbital weapons platform, and as soon as it did, I began slowly infecting it and taking control of it with Mechu-deru. Shortly thereafter, I had the weapon under my complete control, and right as I was about to bounce the signal from there to Raven Rock to see if I couldn't possibly infect the Zax supercomputer A.I. Eden remotely, it cut itself off.
Haa, I guess I wasn't quiet enough in my takeover of the Bradley-Hercules satellite. I was hoping Eden wouldn't have noticed, but I suppose that was wishful thinking... Well, no matter, I'll just take care of him at a later date. But in the meantime, let me go see what's happening with the Raven Rock and Adams Air Force base.
Following Eden's discovery of my moves, I used the Bradley-Hercules satellite optical systems and looked down on Raven Rock from way above, and found it in the process of withdrawing its satellite dish back underground. After taking a look-see at Raven Rock and not seeing any of the hatches on the top of the military installation opening up, I changed my view over to Adams Air Force Base and saw the massive mobile base crawler on the north side of the airfield with a number of Vertibird aircraft sitting atop it and many, many Vertibirds spread out across the rest of the airfield.
I wonder if Eden sent them word about what happened to their orbital weapon.
...
Patiently watching over air base, I saw many of the Vertibird aircraft spread out across the airstrip begin to be moved hurriedly by the well over a hundred Enclave personnel there into the nearby hangars, likely due to them being informed of the loss of control of the Bradley-Hercules satellite.
I suppose I won't have to deal with any Enclave reinforcements from the looks of things, at least for the time being. That said, there is a chance that they may come for me at some point, hence I might as well attempt to take over a few more satellites, so I can keep eyes on them at all times.
After completing that thought, I immediately set out on making that idea a reality. Thus, I dedicated a few my of newly gained thought processes to sending out signals via this facility to all the satellites that were within range of this station's dishes. And as I was rapidly taking over the many satellites that were somehow still functioning in Earth's orbit and then bouncing signals from those satellites to other satellite facilities on the ground and continuing on from there, I turned away from the console and towards the knocked-out Enclave officer and began walking towards him.
The moment I was in front of the older gentleman, I shook him for several seconds and woke him up.
"Mhm, how did I pass out and what ..." The Enclave officer thought aloud as he awoke from his sudden slumber.
"That would be because of me." I said, interrupting the man's thoughts and right as I did, he froze up, more likely than not because he realized he was in a very dangerous and compromising situation.
A few seconds passed by and as I was going to continue speaking, the Enclave officer reached for where his Plasma Defender was holstered previously prior to me disarming him. But once his hands reached where it was supposed to be, he found nothing, thus he opened his eyes fully and just about shit himself when his eyes laid upon my massive frame, donning an even more massive suit of power armor.
"How about you calm down there bud, and stop trying to reach for weapons you longer have!" I told the man.
Waiting a few seconds for him to register what was taking place, he nodded his head eventually. "Okay, so here's the situation you, as well as the rest of your group, are currently in. I've infiltrated this satellite relay station and have taken control over the Bradley-Hercules orbital weapons platform you guys had control over."
"Furthermore, both Raven Rock and Adams Air Force Base have gone into full lockdown and have abandoned you guys to the wolves, those wolves being me and my forces that are ready to storm this place and eliminate all of you here as soon as I give the word." I said intimidatingly while also utilizing the bloody aura that I gained from my Slaughter perk for the first time to intimidate him even further than he already was.
"So, here are your options, officer Manning. The first one I'll give you is the one I recommend by the way, is you can choose to surrender and switch to my side and come under my command. The selling point for this specific option is that my goals aren't all that dissimilar from the Enclave in rebuilding society, except I'm not trying to exterminate all mutant life, including the rest of the surviving human population that managed to survive nuclear annihilation up to now." I said before moving on to give him the grim and not-so-great option number two.
"Option two is, you can choose to not take option one, which will result in me torturing and extracting whatever useful information I can claw out of you and all of your men. And when you and your men are inevitably of no more use to me, the bunch of you will be disposed of in some manner or another, which can range from being fed to a pack of Deathclaws, being used in FEV and genetic experiments, or I can extract each of your brains and turn you all into Robobrains, that will do my bidding long into the foreseeable future." I explained in graphic detail.
"So, what will it be, option one or option two?" I asked, whilst exerting a sizable amount of mental pressure on the officer.
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Hey, I'm going to be gone for months at a time for work probably for the next year, year and a half, so Patreon is getting dismantled and I will be going back to writing purely as a hobby, so expect releases for the next however many days till you guys are caught up. Also, there will be another release later this evening.