Chapter 161: Chapter 156

Due to awareness about the metaphysical, the Nexus Severalty took every rumor seriously. It often led to dead ends, but the few pay-offs were significant enough to justify the thorough procedures.

 

Even if the results of the investigation was something completely unrelated to the metanatural.

 

Hearing stories of a ‘haunted’ region, where children were abducted every few years or so, and where even raiders warily tread through, immediately stood out like a sore thumb. Fortunately, eyebot scans of the region quickly found a very mundane source of it all, and some simple forensics and tracking confirmed that the regional threat was anything but eldritch.

 

Chase could appreciate that. After the hell she’d been through, an underground raider base was a very welcome threat to deal with. The new commander of the Nexus 5th Company had the honor of taking charge of the operation, with only robotic elements to assist. After the mopping up of the Capital Wasteland, this was supposed to be another proving ground to further blood and temper the company.

 

The updates from the eyebots ensured that the infiltrating squads would not be caught by surprise, and teleport beacons set and reset at frequent intervals would ensure that the company’s reserves would deploy where they were needed in a pinch.

 

They had expected raiders, super mutants, and maybe even ghouls. But instead, first encounter with the enemy introduced Chase and her soldiers to misshapen giants, over-muscled bodies hunched over or curled up with facial features that’d make even a super mutant look dashing in comparison.

 

The brutes were immediately hostile, charging at the scouts with gurgling war cries. Thankfully, they seemed no more resilient than super mutants, and were put down without issue. If anything, they whimpered submissively after the company’s first show of firepower, and were easily herded and cuffed instead of requiring the standard shattering of limbs.

 

Not so the few women who were found among the oversized thugs. 

 

That was completely unexpected. The women were obviously the leaders of the pack, being better armed and armored, and all six of them wore haughty superiority like a second skin.

 

Well, until the scouts utterly humiliated them in melee and wrenched their limbs out, anyway. Then they were mewling pathetically like any other raider.

 

The prisoners were quickly dragged back for a quick interrogation, where the brutes proved to be barely intelligent, let alone intelligible, but the female raiders quick caved in to standard questioning.

 

Hearing about captured breeders gave Chase flashbacks about her time with the Children of Atom. Sure, the cleansing rituals drained off the nightmares and the trauma, but the sterile memories were still there, and hearing such barbarity being repeated stoked wrath in the survivor of the Rape of Acadia.

 

“Deploy everyone,” Chase ordered immediately after finishing off with the interrogation and sending an update back to Caladan. “Form a cordon, make sure nobody escapes.”

 

A quick battleplan was formed, and 5th Company began to close in on their target. A huge wave of muscled, twisted brutes surged out, with nothing but rusted metal plates for armor and improvised heavy melee weapons. Knowing what little she did about Vault 93, Chase pitied the mutants, but ordered them processed nonetheless.

 

5th Company encountered no other resistance as they came across a primitive, sprawling shanty town by the foot of a hill. It stank worse than any wasteland settlement Chase had encountered so far, filled with the concentrated stench of rust, blood, and shit. Then they found a section walled off with rusted metal, and inside they found the prisoners, all women, all shackled and chained, some pregnant, some not.

 

Commander Chase amended the battle plans after witnessing that. The robots would only aid in securing the immediate area outside of Vault 93. Only 5th Company would take part in besieging the cavern, with its commander leading from the front. She wanted as many of the people responsible to herself.

 

Instead of a slow climb up, the entirety of the company engaged their armor’s integrated jump packs and shot up towards the lone entrance to the supposed citadel of the Queendom of Vault 93. The soldiers obeyed without hesitation their synth commander’s order to switch to blades only. Most shared her fury and were keen to take part in a very bloody, very ruthless Nexus processing.

 

The vanguard descended into the hole in the hill and immediately broke into a charge the moment their armored boots hit the ground. Laser and bullet fire did not slow them, and neither did the oversized clubs and the meaty mass of wretched giants. Commander Chase was at the forefront of the assault, severing muscular limbs and tossing aside the brutes in her way.

 

Even through her cold rage, she knew that these pathetic things were not her true prey, only chaff and fodder that the so-called rulers of Vault 93 hid behind. A clatter of grenades were flung at the vanguard, heedless of the brutes that swamped the soldiers. The explosions and shrapnel only served to lighten the press of bodies, and show just how callous the armored defenders of Vault 93 were.

 

“Don’t stop! To their leaders!” Chase yelled in her comms and through her helmet’s speakers, pointing her crystal blade at the vault’s barricaded entrance. “Peace through power!”

 

She finally made it past the scrum of deformed brutes, and then met a mob of tattered, normal, sickly humans that crowded the rest of the way to the vault proper. The women were armed with clubs and wooden sticks barely deserving to be called spears. They were obviously terrified of her, but their weapons remained raised.

 

Chase snarled and focused back to the main objective, the armored figures taking indiscriminate potshots at her and 5th Company.

 

With no brutes to potentially bar her path, the commander engaged her jump packs again and shot like a missile towards the entrance. The looks of surprise and fear on these women’s faces made Chase grin, and the grin grew as they tried and failed to riddle her with bullets.

 

Several power armored forms stomped up to the commander, their Rippers buzzing as they swung and thrust, but Chase’s Tiberium blade easily cut through both weapons and wielders with ease. She did not enjoy their screams, but their fear? Their realization that the tables had turned?

 

Oh, Chase enjoyed that very much.

 

She cut her way through several more power armors before the sounds of boots behind her signaled the arrival of her troopers. Upon seeing this, the remaining defenders of Vault 93 finally dropped their weapons and raised their hands.

 

“We surrender!” a woman wailed. “Please, we beg you, we surrender!”

 

The company commander finally paused to take stock of the situation. These women, bleeding or not, were weeping in terror. They looked so frail underneath their armor. A few with exposed hands had thin, fragile fingers that were carefully manicured.

 

She compared that to the prisoners she had seen outside, to the weak stick-wielding women just outside the vault door.

 

“Process them,” Chase spat. The women screamed as she and the soldiers of 5th Company stalked towards them with blades raised.

 

With the leadership literally disarmed…and dis-legged, Chase only needed to show off the screaming ‘queen’ to the rest of the surviving defenders in the cavern to get them to meekly drop their weapons. She left the processing of the prisoners to Blake, her second-in-command, and sent an update to Sev. No doubt the ruler of the Nexus would be interested in such a foul discovery.

 

“That’s…disturbing,” he commented after Chase’s debriefing outside the cavern. “No males?”

 

The commander shook her head. “Found a few, but they weren’t in armor or given guns like those in the vault. Dressed a bit better than the others, but that’s about it.”

You are reading story Uncommon Wealth at novel35.com

 

Sev’s face scrunched up into a deeper frown on her screen. “Well… No, not the time for a gender equality joke.” His eyes seemed to pierce right into hers. “How are you holding up, commander?”

 

Chase shook her head again. “I’m…fine, sir.”

 

“You sure?”

 

“Positive,” she answered with a decisive nod.

 

Sev stared at her for a second longer before sighing with what she thought was relief, though the smile caught her off guard. “You did good here, Commander Chase. I take it you wish to see through the whole wrapping up operation?” 

 

“Yes, sir.” The thought of all those prisoners wallowing in dirt like that… She could do more for them.

 

“You have it. As usual, you have the Nexus’ resources at your disposal. Medical teams are already ready to teleport and fly over.”

 

Chase snapped a sharp salute. “Thank you, sir.”

 

Sev nodded in reply, and then he appeared to rest his chin on his interlaced fingers. “The leadership you captured… Once the healing arches are set up, can you get me a thorough report on how Vault 93 operates?”

 

She couldn’t hide her grin even if she wanted to. “With pleasure sir.”

 

*****

 

“The recordings of the interrogations are available for reference,” Sev said casually after everyone was suitably appalled from reading through the reports about Vault 93.

 

Nora was tempted to scratch at the disgust crawling under her skin. A facade of a kingdom - or ‘queendom’ as they called themselves - operating with a caste system that determined the status of the children you’re forced to birth out. And most of the males were pumped so full of chemicals and hormones from the start that they became misshapen monsters. 

 

No, they weren’t monsters. The ruling ‘court’, the self-declared ‘nobles’ of the vault were the monsters. The brutes were as much victims as the kidnapped people forced to become broodmares.

 

“There’s accounts of the…’toy’ caste males being nothing more than just that: Convenient dicks to use and share. As far as we know, their mental capacity is barely developed enough to properly consider sexual encounters…”

 

Nora sighed. “Hence female rapists?”

 

“Hence female rapists,” Sev echoed with a nod.

 

That most in the toy caste seemed barely old enough to be considered adults, and coupled with their stunted mental states…

 

“How do you wish to proceed with them?” Nora asked, already knowing the answer.

 

“No exceptions to be made,” Sev declared, earning stern nods and agreements throughout the meeting room. “Blacksite Tleilax, with all that entails.”

 

And ‘all that entails’ meant they’d lose all basic rights down in that despicable hole. But still, Nora couldn’t really find a solid reason to argue against that. Not after the atrocities Vault 93 had committed.

 

“What about the peasant caste?” she asked with a heavy sigh.

 

“We’ll see if deprogramming and rehab takes with them, same as the toy males. If yes, we put them through the usual channels for probation. If no…”

 

“Euthanize?” Curie of all people asked.

 

“I guess we’ll see when the time comes,” Sev decided with a shrug. “As for the…’brutes’...”

 

Nora held her breath, hoping that she wouldn’t have to argue against a genocide. The Nexus’ ruler turned to Dr Li, who quickly took up a frown.

 

“Any chance we can undo the damage done to them?”

 

The head of the Nexus Occuld Department took a moment to think before answering. “Gene-repairing is still being worked on… But even then, we could try bolstering the emitters with a few rituals to alter the metaphysics of healing.”

 

“Worth a shot, I guess.”

 

The meeting was finally concluded shortly after that, and Nora found herself plagued over the next few nights with nightmares of grotesque women hovering around her as a monstrous parody of a man violated her. It was bad enough that she had to see an occultist to have her first dream-purge.

 

When rumors of a few of the Vault 93 ‘nobility’ might be used for breeding experiments, Nora actually took a full hour to decide whether to arrange another meeting with Sev. Ultimately, she decided that the rumor was only that, a rumor, and until substantial evidence could be found, she’d leave it at that.

 

Or maybe it’d be easier to forget that she ever heard such things?

You can find story with these keywords: Uncommon Wealth, Read Uncommon Wealth, Uncommon Wealth novel, Uncommon Wealth book, Uncommon Wealth story, Uncommon Wealth full, Uncommon Wealth Latest Chapter