“Well, they’re Supermutants,” said Heather. “So, I guess they need killing.”

 

Nora could think of several reasons to kill the big brutes. Just being where they were they were a threat to several settlements. Wiseman thought they were interfering with the Traders who were buying his Tarberries. And this place was on Rhys’ list.

 

“Anyone see the suiciders?” she asked over the radio.

 

“A pair of them are hanging out on the left side of the portico,” said Heather. “I have a shot.”

 

“Give us a minute so we have a good angle on them,” said Barb. “I’m almost in position to get that Primus.”

 

Nora nodded, then acknowledged verbally. If they could take out the Suiciders they would take out a mini-gunner. And if Barb could get the other one, the leader out of the blast radius of the Suiciders, the fight outside the hospital would be over. Of course, that still left the large interior of the big hospital, probably swarming with the big green uglies.

 

The Supermutants were hideous. Standing at least nine feet tall, with shoulders and arms thick with muscle out of proportion to their bodies, Nora we sure that they were far stronger than any normal human. With their green wrinkly skin and coarse features they reminded the Sole Survivor of a cross between Neanderthals and a particularly scary comic book character from her time.  In a battle of strength she would be no match for one, though with her reflexes and speed, as well as the ultra-sharp weapons she carried, she thought she could come out on top in one on one melee.

 

Zooming in on the suiciders with her suit vision system, she could see the bombs in their right hands, their indicator lights blinking. The mutants carried the bombs always armed, ready to trigger in an instant. Unfortunately for them, that meant the bombs could be set off by anything hitting them. Unlike larger weapons, the mini-nukes had no safeties. It was hard enough to make a working warhead that small, and they weren’t all that powerful for the amount of nuclear material they carried, but still powerful enough to scare the shit out of anyone that faced them, whether in a Fatman or in the hands of a suicidal mutant. She sighted in on the suicider that Heather wasn’t ready to hit, in case the woman had an unlikely miss.

 

“Go,” she said in the radio. Heather’s laser shot was right on target, and the one suicider went up in a furious blast, killing the other suicider and the high ranking Supermutant with the mini-gun. Barb’s single round put a hole through the head of the other Primus, and just that quickly the strength of the Supermutant picket outside hospital had its guts ripped out. The three brutes, large stupider than usual Supermutants with bladed boards their only weapons, ran where they thought the fire was coming from. Nora took two of them out, Barb the third. The team waited a few moments in case some were in hiding or had gone around the corner for a bathroom break.

 

“I think that was it,” said Heather, scanning the area with her visor. Nora joined in with all the sensor power of her suit, to find nothing. The three moved down, Nora collecting the mini-nuke that hadn’t gone off, checking to make sure it was disarmed. They then moved to the door, listening for a moment.

 

“You two get to either side while I sow some mines. We’ll set up a kill zone and take out anything that comes into the lobby. Afterwards I’ll get out of my PA and we’ll sweep through, make sure all the mutants are dead, and get all the loot we can carry.”

 

The smiles she got in return let her know how her people thought about the plan. All hated Supermutants with a passion, and wiping out this cell would go a long way to making this region of the Commonwealth safe and secure. Nora pulled the door open, the dogs staying where she had told them to, then slipped in as silently as the power armor would let them.

 

“Oh shit,” hissed Barb into the radio. “Suicider.”

 

Nora saw the mutant coming from behind the main desk thirty yards in from the entrance, the beeping munition in his hand. She hadn’t expected them to have one inside and so close to the entrance, but there he was. “Get covered behind me,” she yelled, moving forward with the weapon she had chosen for the inside firefight. The M60 chattered away, running through ten rounds a second as the two hundred round belt fed through the receiver.

 

The suicider exploded ten meters from Nora, the blast encompassing the entire lobby. Her suit rocked back, while some of the heat and radiation penetrated, causing flash burns on her skin. Nora screamed, thinking herself dead. The voices of her people shouting into their radios told her they were still alive, and on opening her eyes and looking at the ceiling two stories above, she realized she was on her back and very much alive.

 

“I have taken critical damage,” said the suit. “Forward torso armor has been compromised.”

 

That means this armor is now useless, thought Nora as she pushed herself back to her feet. Not really useless, since the armor on limbs and back was still sturdy enough to turn most attacks. She was vulnerable in the part enemies were most likely to attack, though, and her helmet sensors were almost blinded. And the other mutants were coming out of doorways and down the stairs on the attack. More than she had ever seen at one time.

 

Barb and Heather were still behind cover in the rear, shooting around a desk and a pillar respectively, using the lessons Nora had taught them to expose as little as possible. Nora was the primary target, and every mutant with a ranged weapon was firing at her suit. Barb was firing one long burst at the mutants coming down the stairs, piling up the dead for the followers to trip over, while Heather was taking down those on the second floor firing over the railing, her laser taking them out one by one.

 

Nora held down the trigger of the M60 for the full nineteen seconds she had on the belt. The gun chattered away, sending out the powerful .308 caliber rounds in sweeps that were leaving every mutant in its path to fall, most dead, the others seriously wounded. Nora screamed the entire time, feeling the fragments of her armor and slivers of bullets penetrating her flesh. She doubted she would survive this fight, but was determined that neither would the mutants.

 

The machinegun clicked on empty, the belt expended, but there were no more living mutants in front of her. The stair was clogged with dead, and the only living mutants were on the third-floor firing over the railing. Nora let the machinegun fall from shaking hands and wrestled the grenade launcher into position, sending a high explosive shell up to the third floor. Some mutants flew off the walk to land in the lobby, many around them flung back into the wall. Nora jacked another round into the GL and fired, then again, over and over.

 

“Nora,” yelled Barb. “Stop. Their all dead.”

 

“All dead hissed,” Nora, before her eyes closed and she passed out.

 

“Suit eject,” shouted Barb, continuing with the override code that Nora had given to them for emergencies like this. The back of the suit opened and swung up, while the back panels of arms and legs swung open to the side.

 

Nora fell back and out of the suit, Heather and Barb catching her body and lowering her to the floor.

 

“She’s bleeding,” said Barb, pushing a stimpak into Nora’s hand.

 

“She's barely breathing,” said a concerned Heather, cradling her friends head in her lap. “Have you ever seen such a slaughter.”

 

A moment later Nora’s eyes opened and she took a quick breath. “Did we win?”

 

“We won, partner,” said a teary eyes Heather. “If not for you and your power armor that suicider would have killed me and Barb. You took the brunt of the blast, then swept the mutants in the lobby away with your MG.”

 

“Let me see,” said Nora, sitting up. “I’m going to be fine,” she told her friends when they tried to hold her down. “I can feel myself healing.”

 

“You’re not invulnerable, or immortal, partner,” said Heather. “You could have been killed in this fight. I think luck played as much a part in it as skill and equipment.”

 

 “Goddamn,” hissed Nora as she looked over the lobby. “Did we kill a hundred of them?”

 

“At least seventy of the Supermutants, and probably twenty or more of their hounds,” said Barb. “Maybe more.”

 

“Damn. You think there are any more of them in here?”

 

“I don’t know, Heather,” said Nora, feeling more of her strength returning every moment. “I can’t believe they were stupid enough to just fling themselves into our fire. But some must have pulled back.”

 

“You can’t believe a race that sends warriors in with nukes to suicide bomb can’t be suicidal in other ways?” asked Barb.

 

“I guess it shouldn’t surprise me. But I need to get on my feet so we can clear this place out.”

 

There were mutants still extant in the hospital. They hadn’t learned a thing from their fellows who had sacrificed themselves. The big uglies boasted about how superior they were, and how the humans were already dead, giving their positions away to the silent humans’ time after time. The place cleared, they packed out five trips with Wilson, sending meds and surgical instruments, circuitry and data, into the QESS system.

 

“I think we need to spend the night at Greentop so you can recover, Nora,” said Heather. “You heal fast, but even you need some recovery.”

 

“I agree,” said the Sole Survivor. “I could use a half dozen meals and a long sleep. And maybe some sex. Yes, definitely some sex. And my poor armor needs some major repairs.”

 

“I want check out Malden Center tomorrow or the next day,” said Heather. “I’ve heard rumors of synth activity there. And we can do something on my list, if you’re up to it.”

 

Nora thought for a moment. She wanted to get the Slog added to the alliance, but they were fine. There were at least fifteen armed settlers there, and Wiseman seemed like good leader. “Let me get the armor patched on the torso of my suit, in case these synths are as bad as the ones at Arcjet.”

 

The settlers at Greentop were happy to see them. The robots had completed their work and all the buildings were finish and running. The CSB, the Core Services Building was situated to not only provide power and water, but to place its concrete wall in the most likely path of attack on the settlement, from the direction of Malden. The laser turrets on the roof covered most approaches, while those on the repaired house, the new quarters and the settler workshop building, along with the scaffolding towers, would give any attacker a sharp lesson on why they should leave Minuteman settlements alone. It was purely a farm at the moment, but once they had their food producing needs under control, she was hoping they could contribute to the industry of the Alliance.

 

“It looks like you got the hell shot out of your armor. How in the hell did you come through that alive?” asked Doris, looking at the scorched armor, large holes visible in the front.

 

“Some luck and some toughness,” said Nora, looking at the armor and wondering herself how she survived.

 

“Who did you take on this time?” said Geof, standing next to a new settler, a cute blond.

 

“Supermutants,” said Nora, feeling like she wanted to take a seat. “I’m still feeling kind of weak. Do you mind if I take a seat in your house?”

 

“Not at all,” said Doris. “It’s really your house as well, after all.”

 

“We took out the tribe down in Medford Memorial,” said Heather, checking Nora’s vitals to make sure her friends was recovering, and smiling as she saw the results. “A whole fuck-ton of the bastards. We counted eighty some of them after it was over.”

 

“That many?” asked Taylor after a whistle. “How’d you take down so many?”

 

“Well,” said Barb, “Taking out some of their suiciders took out quite a few of them. And them running at us in the lobby in impossible to miss bunches did a lot more. But our courageous general taking fire as she mowed them down with her belt fed did most of the damage.”

 

“Don’t forget that you two accounted for many,” said Nora. “Barb piled up at least twenty of them on the stairs, while Heather killed those on the third-floor firing down at us. It was a team effort, and without all of us we wouldn’t be sitting here.”

 

“Don’t forget the robots we took out on the way to the Slog,” said Heather.

 

“So you contacted those ghouls,” said Geof, his arm going around the shoulders of the new female settler. “Are they going to join?”

 

“They damn well better,” said Nora, her eyes flashing fire. “It was their mission, and after what we went through, the owe us. Of course, if they back out there’s nothing I can do about it.”

 

“They’ll join,” said Doris. “Are you going back over there tomorrow?”

 

“We’re going into Malden Center tomorrow,” said Nora, seeing the shocked expressions on the faces of the settlers.

 

“That place is bad news. Word is that no one who goes in there comes out. Be careful, because this thing you’re putting together needs you.”

 

“No one person is vital to the alliance,” said Nora, doubting her words as she said them. It was the right thing to say, but was it true? “Besides, we just came out of Malden Memorial, and I’m betting everyone who went in there before we did ended up in Supermutant cookpots.”

 

Nora got her food and rest, and the sex she craved afterwards. Geof and Thom were given permission by their women to see to the needs of the Alliance Leader. Nora told them they didn’t have to, but Doris insisted, and Nora and her two friends were seen to by the two virile men.

 

“I hope we didn’t ruin those two for their ladies,” said Nora as she looked at the smiling faces of her partners.

 

“They’re men,” said a scoffing Heather. “They’ll dream about us, you really. But when the only pussy around is their steady they’ll be satisfied with that.”

 

Nora thought her friend was correct. While she enjoyed the hell out of sex, almost all men were driven to it more than most women. They would take whatever was offered them to Cum in and be happy.

 

“Well, here we are,” said Heather as they stopped in front of the double doors of a metro station that looked like any other in the Boston area. And most of those stations were filled with their horrors, mostly Raiders and feral ghouls. Bad enough, but without the high-tech weapons the synths carried.

 

The Recon Power Armor was back at Greentop, while Geof, who had turned out to be a competent engineer, was smoothing out the repairs Nora had patched with the carbon titanium alloy that had come through the QESS. He would later spray paint it with the blue and white Minuteman scheme, all the paint subdued so it would not stand out in the brush. The helmet had also been patched, but Nora would have to replace the sensors, using the kits that Sturgis and Conrad had sent her.

 

Preston had been ecstatic that she had founded four settlements in the Northeast region of the commonwealth, and was on the verge of adding a fifth. He wished her safe travels and said he looked forward to seeing her back. Since she still had to get the Slog prepared, then go see what Mr. Finch might need to entice him into the Alliance, and was planning to go to Goodneighbor afterwards, she had been very noncommittal about her return. Goodneighbor was reputed to be a den of thieves and the shelter for the many ghouls who had been ejected from Diamond City by McDonough. She was thinking of offering them settler status if they wanted to get out of the neighborhood, while she looked over the shops and vendors that were said to have many weapons and tech not found in Diamond City.

 

“Keep your mind on the here and now, Nora,” cautioned Heather. “Sturgis and Conrad won’t even have the thing ready to fly for several weeks. Maybe a month.”

 

The message from her engineers had caught her full attention. A working Vertibird could be in her future, and with her training she was the only one able to safely fly it. Of course she would have to train Minutemen pilots to fly the Vertibirds that would follow, and in a year or two the Alliance would have its own air force. Maybe strong enough to challenge the Brotherhood if they came to the Commonwealth and didn’t play nice.

 

“Well, let’s go in and see what there is to see,” said Nora, testing the door and finding it unlocked. “So, everyone slow and quiet.”

 

The metro entrance looked much like every other one they had been in. A little more damage than some, all of the old shops collapsed. And then the chilling voice of something not alive spoke.

 

“I am picking something up from the entrance. We are not alone.”

 

“More of the criminals of this surface world?”

 

“I cannot tell.”

The machines started their way, the heavy tread of the metal bodies sounding on the floor. Nora started flashing hand signals, wondering if their silence would confuse the Synths. Raiders were likely to have been talking the entire time the humanoid robots approached. Well, her and her people wouldn’t make that mistake. Satisfied that her people were where she wanted them to be, all with a clear shot, she aimed in. Heather was backup for this fight, since her laser actually made more noise than their suppressed rifles, and Nora thought the machines would be more attuned to the high-tech weapons.

 

The two Synths walked into sight side by side, weapons held low. Nora aimed in on the head of the one to the right, sure that Barb was sighting on the head to the left. They had heard rumors that this generation of Synths had their processors in their bodies. She didn’t know it that were true, but either way their visual sensors were in their heads, and taking out those projections would blind them.

 

“Fire,” whispered Nora, squeezing her trigger and sending a five round burst of high velocity rounds into the head of her target. The head came apart in a scattering of shiny alloy, but the Synth stayed on its feet, firing its laser but not tracking on any target. Barb’s did the same. Heather fired on one of them, directly into the chest, her up gunned laser burning a hole through the torso with a splash of molten metal. The Synth went down like an axed steer, and Nora sent a burst from her rifle into the chest of her target to drop it to the floor.

 

“Looks like the rumor was correct,” said Nora, moving forward to get a look at the Synths without exposing herself to the entrance to the descending stairs. She knelt by the side of the one that Heather had killed, looking it over, then moving on to the next. “I think the processor was about where our hearts would be. But the visual sensors are placed where we thought.”

 

That made sense to Nora, who had wondered in her youth why all higher animals had their eyes and ears in the head. Not just because they were closer to the brain, and so the transmission loop was shorter. But it also gave them the best mobile viewing platform on the body, and the cyberneticists at the Institute seemed to have agreed.

 

“It doesn’t look like they’ve got any extra shielding in the region of their CPU,” said Heather. “I’m betting they are vulnerable to EMP.”

 

“Good deal,” said Nora, making sure the slots on her belt of forty millimeters were ready at hand. About half the grenades she had selected for this mission were pulse weapons, supposedly able to short out electronics for twenty meters from the release of the warhead. She also had a half dozen hand versions, slightly more powerful. Barb and Heather carried a similar number of the same.

 

The party looked over at the half dozen Raiders who laid strewn about, four of them obviously dead from laser blasts. Two had heads that were skewed at unnatural angles, necks broken. Nora was sure that the Synths were stronger than she was, though she doubted by much. She thought her reflexes and speed would put the robots to shame, her fast twitch muscles able to move her limbs much faster than the motor driven extremities of the robotic warriors.

 

Nora crept down the stairs, making as little noise as a small rodent, her team mates right on her tail with the same silence. She had her GL ready to fire from a snap position. The whining sounds of Synths moving in the station came to her ears, along with the scraping and heavy steps of their metal feet. Without the cushion of flesh, and without shoes, they were incapable of walking softly.

 

Nora was still in the shadows when she spotted the Synths. It looked like a couple of squads of the creatures, highlighted in red on her night vision gear. They were all looking away for the moment, as if expecting something to come from the other side of the station or down the tracks. Nora fired at a group of Synths further into the station, Barb and Heather tossing pulse grenades at the nearer robots.

 

With a flash and a crackle the grenades all went off, Nora’s first, followed by the hand tossed weapons of her friends. Most of the Synths froze in place for a second before toppling over, the gyros no longer working to give them balance. A half dozen were still on their feet, turning to fire and catching bursts from Barb and beams from Heather that cut through their chests. Nora jacked another round in and fired, taking out the largest group still on their feet.

 

The Synths had scored a couple of superficial hits on the team, the high-tech armor of the three women turning away the brief contacts. A long enough exposure could burn through, but the name of the game was not letting them get that exposure.

 

More coming,” said Heather over the radio.

 

A couple came into sight, weapons firing. A quartet were on their heels, then a flood of the robots. Nora landed a round right in the center, about ten meters back from the leaders, and the front of the wave collapsed. Barb and Heather kept the second part of the wave busy, while Nora placed another round into the back of the group. And then, just like the mutants the day before, their enemy was gone.

 

“I think that’s enough for now,” said Nora, to the disappointed gaze of Heather. “I don’t want to penetrate farther without power armor. What I do want is all the weapons and electronics we can get off these things. Quickly.”

 

The team moved onto the platform of the station. Heather took up a covered firing position and kept watch. The two Handies with the group went after the burned-out electronics in the chests of the Synths, moving up and jerking what they wanted out of each one in seconds. Nora and Barb started to gather weapons, putting the straps over their shoulders until each was weighed down by a dozen lasers.

 

“Okay. Out of here,” said Nora, leading the way up the stairs. There were of course a couple of more guns up there, but she thought they had already taken a good haul in energy weapons.

 

Nora caught the motion of a couple of Synths in invisibility, their Stealth Boys not perfectly camouflaging them, some of their semi-transparent figures blurring at the edges of their images. They came in with some kind of bladed weapons. Nora hissed a warning as she let the rifles slide from her shoulders and drew her nano-sword in a blur of motion, the ultrasharp weapon cutting through the neck of the closest Synth. A quick dodge and she set up the second for a killing blow.

 

She had been correct. While the Synths most probably had faster processers and fiber optic nerves, allowing for almost instantaneous thought and transmission, their servos were still limited. While her muscles could twitch many times faster than the machine motors.

 

“Good thing you were paying attention,” said Barb as they hustled out of the station and headed for cover in the Slocum’s Joe corporate office, where Nora could call up Wilson to transport the weapon barrels and receivers to a QESS. “Those things are horrible at sneaking, and they still almost got us.”

 

Nora had to agree that the Synths were indeed horrible at sneaking. They were good at using Stealth-boys, though. Not surprising, when no skill went into using the invisibility field generators. The party had learned a valuable lesson without paying too high a price.

 

*     *     *

 

“I expected that there might be ten or twenty of the brutes in that hospital,” said an amazed Wiseman. “But over seventy of them? If I had known that I wouldn’t have asked you to clear them out. At least until you could bring up more people.”

 

“And if I had known how many there were I wouldn’t have gone after them either,” said Nora, shaking her head. “But we did, they’re dead, so mission accomplished. So, will you be joining the Minutemen?”

 

“Don’t forget about the almost thirty Synths we took out in Malden Center,” said an excited Heather.

 

“You’re not talking about the escaped Synths the Railroad helps out, are you?” asked another of the ghouls. “Those poor people.”

 

“Not to worry,” said Barb quickly, since Wiseman looked like he was about to scream. “These were the Gen 1 type. All shiny metal and pure murder. And maybe some plastic covered Gen 2s. But no organic synths.”

 

“Well, that’s a relief,” said Wiseman with a smile. “So yes, we’ll be joining the Minutemen. As soon as we seal the bargain.”

 

“And how do we seal the bargain?” asked Nora, a sick feeling in her stomach as she looked into the hideous face of the very personable ghoul.

 

“Why, we fuck, of course. Best way to seal a deal, since I’m sure you don’t want to marry me.”

 

The look of horror on Nora’s face must have been apparent to all. She couldn’t go through with this. Not that she hadn’t fucked ugly men in the past, but none with the hideous deformity of the irradiated humans. But she needed this settlement in the alliance. Could she bite her tongue, close her eyes, and do it for Queen and Country?

 

“Oh, let her off the hook, Wiseman,” said the female ghoul that was talking with them.

 

Wiseman started to laugh. “It wouldn’t be good for you anyway, Nora,” said the ghoul through his laughs. “My bodily fluids are radioactive. All of my bodily fluids, and I wouldn’t want to burn your tender vaginal tissue with my manly emissions.”

 

Nora let out a sigh of relief. She hadn’t wanted to offend the man. She thought of him as a man, despite his condition, but the thought of having sex with him was something she couldn’t stomach. The woman wondered if that said something about her, revealing something she really didn’t want to think about?

 

“So,” she said, wanting to get her mind off this train of thought. “We’re going to want to build here. Water, more quarters, defenses, even working toilets.”

 

“That’s all fine. But this is our home. So I would like to see your plans before you start construction. And how long will your crew be on site?”

 

“You’re not going to believe this part, Wiseman.”

 

By late next day the robots had finished their work. Wiseman and several if his fellows walked the settlement with Nora, looking over the Core Services Building with its humming reactors and water filtration systems. The refurbished quarters with patched walls. New quarters with clean comfortable beds and showers. And multiple turrets, weapon’s barrels thrusting from armored cores as their sensors searched for enemies.

 

“Very nice,” said Wiseman, nodding his head. “You lived up to your part of the bargain, and we will do our part. Anyone who wants to settle here is welcome, as long as they are accepting of us, and we’ll start forming our militia squad as soon as we have the people and weapons. So, where to next for you?”