Rachel Wilson – Commonwealth
The cold, wet hallway echoed with her running footsteps and her hard breathing. The lights flickering as darkness crept in, the further she went, and farther and farther apart the working lights came. She arrived to a T and stopped not knowing which way to go. She had been running from floor to floor, trying to find an exit, and now it seemed she was trapped in the basement. She panted as she caught her breath and turned right. She stopped just to listen as she heard a voice.
“Come out; come out, wherever you are?” An angry raider shouted, as he banged a nearby pipe with the barrel of his shotgun. “Come on puppet, we won’t hurt you…much… I swear we’ll be gentle…”
Fear crept up on her, and she shivered, she started to run again. But she tripped on the broken up floor and fell forward slamming to the ground. She screamed in pain realizing she had twisted her ankle. She held her hands to her mouth hoping they hadn’t heard her. Tears were streaming down her face. She struggled to get up as she clawed away at the wall slowly made her way up, however the running steps were coming closer and closer.
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Rachel slung her pack over her shoulder; she had been wandering the Commonwealth for a while now. There was lots of good loot available if you knew where to look. It had been a while since she had a good bounty, the Minutemen were pretty much taking up all the good jobs. She was always one step behind them. She regretted leaving them; after all it had been steady pay and work.
She had turned to scavenging in the past few weeks, traders always looking for one thing or another. It kept her well fed, but she wanted more, she wanted to settle down somewhere, lay some roots as they say. She looked through her other pack and took out a smaller bag filled with circuit boards. She showed it to the tin man, and he signaled for the gate to be opened. The door slowly moved on its track as it shifted from its position towards the right.
The Brotherhood had been a force to be reckoned with, but the Railroad planted a bomb on the airship, and it was destroyed. At least that was the official record, some say there had been a malfunction aboard or another group had destroyed it. They say the Railroad was blamed just so that they would have an excuse to destroy them. She didn’t care either way; she wasn’t a fan of those that loved synths.
Egret Tours Marina had become their only outpost in the Commonwealth. No one knew why they remained, but at least they brought some sort of stability to the area. Plus, they kept the Gunner’s from leaving their Plaza and reinforcing their forces up north. She walked inside the compound and went over to a line leading to a storefront, where the Brotherhood exchanged certain items for caps. They loved circuit boards, and she had made sure to always grab them when she came across them; no idea as to why they needed them.
As she waited in line, A vertibird soared above the compound and started to hover as it readied to land. It slowly descended and out came three fully armored Paladins, with two scribes carrying a woman in a stretcher. The Vertibird took off as an officer and medics ran towards the stretcher. It seemed one of the officers had asked why they had returned.
The one paladin removed her helmet, “Found her over at Milton General Hospital. We airdropped by hospital, and Dan must have landed on weak spot as he went through the ground into the maintenance tunnels. She had a broken foot, and there were a few raiders that were beating her and almost raped her. We sent them to hell. Got our gauntlets bloodied. They weren’t worth wasting bullets on.”
Rachel overheard them as they spoke. That girl had been lucky, and they even brought her via Vertibird, she had always wanted to ride one, they fascinated her how they stayed afloat. He moved forward as she was next in line, and handed the bag with circuit boards to the scribe standing behind the counter. She waited, and soon was handed a bag with caps, rolled up. The Brotherhood were trustworthy, but out of habit she ran her finger through the rolls counting the caps and making sure they were all there.
She had her caps, and stepped out of the line. She stepped through the open gate and looked behind her at the compound with its tall walls and strong gate. She wished she could join them, but as he had been told before, they weren’t recruiting at the moment. Had they been recruiting, she would’ve had to go to the Capital Wasteland for training.
She gripped her blade, and slung her SMG’s strap over her shoulder. Even though the Brotherhood had a presence here, the road was still treacherous. Especially since this are wasn’t patrolled by the Minutemen. She made her way north along a road that led to the train tracks. She followed the tracks for a while. She passed quite a few feral beasts, but they hadn’t taken notice to her. The yao guai was too busy attacking a Radstag to see her. The second one he had seen was busy chasing some feral dogs.
She soon found herself near Vault 81, she had an urge to go there, but needed to go down to the dock and see if there were any barges. To her luck there were three moored there. She approached the dock master, handing him some caps, and if there was one headed for Taffington Boathouse. He looked at his clipboard and pointed to the one headed there, to her luck it was departing now. She gave a crew hand some caps and made her way aboard. She found herself a spot, and leaned back to take a nap.
She was woken up when they were reaching the boathouse. The barge pulled to the dock, passing multiple water purifiers that had been setup, along with a pump house and bottling plant. She grabbed her stuff and got off the boat as it was docking, the crew hated when you did that. They rather you wait till it’s docked. Something about falling and being crushed.
She went inside the renovated house, and bought a 2lt bottle of water from a merchant. She made her way to the gate but a large caravan was arriving from Starlight City, looks like they were here to pick up water barrels, as the city grew, it needed more and more purified water, and the groundwater they were pumping wasn’t enough. The black clad Starlight City guards stepped off the caravan and they started to load barrels on their caravans. There was a rumor that their armor design was based off of that of Institute coursers. She had encountered one when she along with the rest of the Minutemen stormed the institute with the General, she was sure she was dead, but Colonel Preston had save her.
She looked at the guards, and the rumors were true, after all the design was menacing. The only discernible difference between an Institute courser uniform and one from Starlight city was the yellow Star of Bethlehem on their backs, along with two yellow stripes that ran along the side of the pants. Luckily, the guards themselves were friendly and not stuck up like those from Diamond City.
As she waited for the caravan to move out of the gate she overheard the guards talking to an officer. The officer was smoking a cigarette, “Covenant has buckled; they and their little Compound have joined Starlight City.”
The guard looked at the officer quizzically, “What do we need Covenant for? It’s a small settlement.”
“Well that small settlement is heavily guarded, and by chance there’s a pipeline that leads from underneath Starlight City to there, and it is intact. They discovered it, while they were preparing ground for some of the towers. This means we can build a pipeline from here to Covenant, which will connect to the city, and we can pump water.” He replied as he leaned against a cart.
“Why not just attack it and take it over?” Rachel asked as she walked closer.
The officer gave her a once over, “Because of their defenses. Any attack would’ve been costly. Besides they are controlled by a group called the Compound; bunch of scientists or something. Those eggheads are valuable. After all, some of the rumors are that Sanctuary Hills had some Institute scientist join them. So Mayor Goodall has made creating a scientific community within Starlight one of his priorities. Alright boys, enough blabbering, get back to work… Ma’am.”
Rachel nodded as they walked away. She hadn’t visited Covenant; hear they were pricks when it came to allowing people entrance to their community. She looked at her map, and decided to make her way to Greentop Nursery. It wasn’t that far from Taffington, only about an hour. There she could spend the night before she headed west.
Greentop Nursery was noticeable from other settlements, due to its wall being made up of scrapped cars. There wasn’t much of interest here aside from its farm. The Farm was one of the biggest producers of corn and gourds in the area. There was an inn that was built next to a pre-war house. She paid the caps for her room, and called it a day as she got on the bed, tired, her nap had made her more tired than rested.
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