Chapter 133: Chapter 129

A month was given for the madness of Far Harbor to be out of most people’s system, before a vote had been put out across every terminal. It was a near unanimous decision from the populace to increase the pace of expansion. After seeing the madness out in the wasteland like the crazed cultists in Far Harbor, general sentiment was to have the Nexus stamp out such threats before they could inflict their suffering on more innocents. Or worse, actually affect the citizenry of the Nexus like that time with the Faceless infection.

 

Which led to the spearhead southwest towards New York City. The legions of metal robots secured the wasteland in between the Nexus and the main destination with ease, assimilating two vaults and a scattering of settlements as the borders grew along the coastline. 

 

At the same time, the Companies conducted a naval invasion on Long Island, sweeping their way south with little to slow them down. Raider and super mutant strongholds were quickly overrun, their occupants secured for Blacksite Tleilax while any prisoners were liberated and given the usual option of leaving with some supplies or being processed for assimilation into the Nexus.

 

With their new sensors looking beyond the natural world, a couple of metaphysical landmarks were found and quarantined for later study, while eldritch trinkets were secured by occultists who were flown over straight from Research Center Ix.

 

The march along both coastlines would meet down at the broken ruins of New York City, which had suffered the blasts of at least two strategic nuclear warheads. Its skyline was shorter and far less dense than the pre-war photos showed, and eyebots had found the place to be lousy with ghouls and super mutants. Once beacons of light in their own right, most of the skyscrapers had either deteriorated to their skeletal metal frames or toppled over after succumbing to the harsh elements.

 

Some human settlements were found, the biggest of which was the heavily fortified town that traders knew as ‘The Square’, not to be confused with the raider’s stronghold known as ‘Mad Square’. Overrunning the latter proved to be a good trial for the newbies of every Company, while friendly contact was established with the former. Dealing with the snobs in the highrises there was a bigger annoyance than those from Diamond City though. There’s something about living in higher altitudes that somehow deteriorates a person’s attitude.

 

At least it only took few displays of Nexus technology to quickly shut them up and dispel their air of superiority.

 

The labyrinthian ruins that were New York’s subway system proved to be a different challenge. Stations became fortified settlements or raider camps, with a large cannibal tribe terrorizing the place. Out of expediency, Sentinels were sent down to clear obstructions and collapsed sections of the tunnels, while packs of Strigoi stormed through and flushed out every hostile lifeform.

 

Eva archived the combat data from the robots to craft new simulations for future training, after Sarah Lyons pointed out how little exposure the troopers had to such an environment. Vaults didn’t count because of how easily navigable they tended to be.

 

New York City took four days to be scoured, and nine days before it was officially declared as safe as the rest of the Nexus. Even as the troops and robots marched on, Mr Handies were already tidying up the ruins and improving the settlements while the lingering cloud of Sentinels disassembled everything else.

 

As new structures rose to repurpose Long Island into a massive naval base, the Nexus’ borders radiated further out across the land. Within five weeks since it began, the expansion had taken over the pre-war state of New Jersey, as well as half of Pennsylvania and most of New York. To the north, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine were partly taken as well. 

 

As usual, roads and underground wiring and rail reached out to connect the new lands to the heart of the Nexus, while swathes of uninhabited land was cleared and reserved for future usage. Heavily forested areas were de-radiated and set aside as reserves for more Ix-born wildlife to inhabit and thrive in, while existing towns, villages and farms were uplifted to meet the Nexus’ basic standards of living by introduction to various improvements.

 

Far Harbor was finally welcomed into the Nexus at the start of the ninth week after the bridge was restored between the island and the mainland. Swarms of robots descended onto the island to pick apart ruins and begin a thorough de-radiation operation, as it did with the rest of the annexed territories, while the people of the port town went through the process of integration with a mix of trepidation and wonder.

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Piper approved of the rapid expansion, even if it meant more work for everyone and less time with Sev. Watching the maps update each time to be a little cleaner, a little more civilized as the Nexus grew was highly satisfying. And hearing the reports of the latest wasteland threat being crushed was also quite enjoyable.

 

There was always some Enclave bunker, some raider fortress to overrun. Strangely, the super mutant buildup further west was still a thing, and eyebots were still collecting information on the massing horde before any actions would be taken. There were plenty of the giants streaming in from all directions, and the surroundings were already desolated by their presence, so having more of them sitting in one spot before a decisive strike was not a bad idea.

 

For now though, it was the rare cults that drew Piper’s attention. There were several variants, but most of them were highly insular and hostile to outsiders. That alone didn’t warrant much from the Nexus, and usually the bots would work around such places, but when practically all of such cults were involved in kidnapping outsiders to be cannibalized, sacrificed or bred… Well, Piper was happy to join the troops to march in and clean up such places.

 

The latest of such settlements was one led by a semi-charismatic and wholly abusive demagogue that led a small town’s worth of his brainwashed offspring, whose mothers were either broken or equally brainwashed to ‘serve’ him. Disturbingly, the delusions of his exploited followers was actually significant enough that the demagogue was collecting noticeable metaphysical weight. 

 

Enough to register on the eyebots’ scans and allegedly create minor miracles, but not enough to stop the Nexus marching in. The fucker used the rumors about Sev to build up his own reputation as a saviour in the wasteland amongst his followers, but conjuring water and scaring away molerats was nothing against integrated technomagic.

 

Oh, did Piper and Cait enjoy taking turns tearing out the man’s balls. And then they let 1st Company have their turns before someone plugged him with a Tiberium shard and sent him off to Tleilax.

 

Deprogramming the brainwashed cult followers, especially the kids, was an intensive chore that was passed onto the Nexus’ healthcare workers, who were getting more skilled with working with such depressing scenes. No doubt Curie would help co-publish some comprehensive journal or two about the whole thing later on.

 

While everyone worked on expansion, Piper was only mildly concerned that Sev was spending days hiding in Tleilax again. Whatever he was working on, it involved a lot of captured raiders and Enclave officers. The AIs couldn’t share any information, and not even Madison had the faintest of ideas of what was going on in that little corner of Tleilax.

 

Piper didn’t linger too much on the matter, deciding to trust her man as she always did. Whether he succeeded in this secret project or not, Sev would tell them, tell her, when the time was right.

 

In the meantime, there was a wager between Piper, Cait and Curie about the nature of his work. Curie suspected a new form of eldritch protection or weapon, Cait guessed it had something to do with the paused crossbreeding project, and Piper had her bet on another new superweapon.

 

When Sev did finally announce his discovery, it was Curie who was perhaps the closest to being correct.

 

Didn’t mean she won the bet though.

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