Chapter 22: Chapter 22

On the next night, with everyone else enjoying the hospitality of Vault 81, I stood alone near the shallow river west of the vault. Time to put my theories on the console to test. Keeping an eye out for crows and any passerbys, I checked and confirmed that yes, remote pickup could make a car’s bonnet into a decent shovel, while any rocks that got in the way got TK’d out.

I got me a decently sized hole, then cloned out concrete slabs around it. After putting up half walls to establish a perimeter, I got into console mode. “This is mine. This is my land. This is my settlement.”

Nope, can’t claim the land.

I tried putting up a roof using the same concrete slabs balanced precariously on columns of the same material. “This is my building.”

Still no luck.

Next option: I got down into the hole and concreted every six side, leaving a hole on the roof for an exit.

“This is mine.” Nope. “This is my building.” Still nope. “This is my hole in the ground.” De nada. “This is my settlement.”

[SettlementOwner:Sev]

Ayy, that worked. So I think the trick was, to start an underground settlement anyway, that I had to own a starting point, not the land itself. Eh, better than the last option of manually digging out an outpost.

With the foundations laid, I got to work, burning through the night while lost in the console as I expanded and carved out my first holding on this blasted world.

Expanding became like a boring game of hungry caterpillar, where I pushed out tunnels into the dirt to expand my area of influence, and then disappeared the ground ‘eaten’ by the tunnels by transmuting it into metal grains like iron, copper or aluminium, and finally teleporting the pile back to the Tupile for future processing.

Need to make rooms? Wide but short tunnels. Easy.

Oh, I was wrong about building only underground. Looks like I could expand upwards above ground too by simply building on top of owned structures. So I built up to the surface, basically creating a structure structure that would easily host fifty or so people comfortably. I kept the roof flat to accommodate adding more floors in the future.

All in all, by the time the sun rose, I had a fresh concrete building about the size of a five-storey office building standing out proudly near the river with extensive basement levels that crossed beneath said river. No decor or furnishing at the moment, but for an overnight’s work, I was pretty impressed with myself.

Also, the test to delay my sleep via console worked well, and I didn’t feel as drained as I would in my past life pulling an all-nighter. Just to be safe though, I’ll probably take the day off from doing anything too stressful.

Well, maybe some allowances if it involved Piper, but that’s about it.

As I was finishing admiring my work and was about to leave, a group of people made themselves known. I turned to them, found it to be Gwen McNamara and some of Vault 81’s guards. They looked suitably surprised and impressed.

“I’m pretty sure this wasn’t here yesterday,” she commented, to which I nodded. “Is this your planned base of operations?”

“Nah, just an outpost, or a station. Maybe add on a few floors for residential units... I’ve got a plan to link it up with the main settlement eventually.”

The concern on her face lessened a bit. “A point of contact near to us. Makes sense I suppose.”

We left my empty husk of a building, well, empty save for the teleport beacon in the basement. That night I had the girls and Curie back in the Tupile to sort through the storage and junk piles for stuff to decorate the outpost with. Anything that looked good or proved useful was kept aside to be teleported to the surface. With help from my new followers, we furnished up the place. I also cloned up a room full of small generators underground and wired it to provide light, air conditioning, elevator access and more importantly power the many wall turrets sticking on the exterior walls.

By the end of day two, I had basically a fortified and rather lavish hotel, my first patch of dirt to take in potential settlers for a settlement yet to be established. The simply named ‘New World 81’ was stocked up with enough supplies to last a few years. It was still uninhabited though, since Vault 81 was happy to accommodate my new dependants for the time being.

With that out of the way, I got back in the tank with Piper and looked through the slaver’s address list. The travel was relatively uneventful as we made our way to a small settlement called Vinebrook around Lexington. The defenses were light, with a couple of turrets and a rickety palisade. As we rolled up outside the gates, I found that the settlement buildings within the walls weren't too shoddy. Quite decent even.

The settlers were curious but wary of us, though they answered my questions easily enough. I was getting directions when screams drew our attention. An adult couple were chasing after a girl a few years older than Piper. Red hair, wide and scared green eyes… It was definitely a younger Cait.

As we watched, the man I assumed was her father sprinted and tackled her to the ground. I winced when I heard the crack of bone. The other settlers were simply watching with silent looks of pity or mild shame as Cait was given a few solid hits before being dragged away.

Why didn’t anyone do anything? Because about a third of the slavers’ orders were filled here. There was some sort of racket going on where the people here basically sold off their kids or unlucky passerbys in exchange for protection.

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“Let’s go,” I told a clearly angry Piper who stomped after me towards a bloody and screaming Cait. At least Piper wasn’t going for her guns yet I guess.

“Brian and Shannon?” I asked aloud after the adults grappling the girl. The three of them paused to look at me.

“I’ll take that as a yes?”

“The hell do ya want?” Brian snarled, and I just gave a polite smile as I pulled out the list and nodded at Cait.

“I bought out your...order from your initial buyers,” I declared loudly for those onlookers to hear. “I’m here to collect.”

Cait looked surprised and confused, but her father became annoyed. “Is this a joke?”

“Not a joke.” I turned to the crowd gathering around us. “I bought out all their orders, actually more like I wholly bought them out. And I’ll be collecting all of the orders today, please.”

Taking it as a cue, Piper drew her atomizers and gave menacing glares to everyone around us.

“Don’t worry, you’ll get paid for your merchandise. I’ll even throw in a bonus for early fulfilment.”

Cait’s parents looked at each other for a moment, and then Brian dragged the girl over to my feet.

“Here. Two hun’erd caps’ the deal.”

I looked at a stunned Cait, noting the bruises (no scars though) and gave him a raised eyebrow. “For damaged property?”

“Does it matter if she’s damaged? She’s going to be strapped on a rack for public use anyway.”

I sighed, holding Piper back with a gesture and then going for my pockets to spawn some currency.

“Fine,” I said as I tossed a bunch of caps on the ground with the same callousness he threw Cait. “There’s five hundred.”

Brian cursed, but he and Shannon quickly dove to pick up every cap off the ground. I knelt down to give Cait a stimpak, waiting for her hiss of pain to end before assuring her with a whisper.

“Stay still while the stimpak does its work alright? No one will hurt you anymore, I promise.”

I got back up and turned to the crowd. “Now, I’ll be calling out names, kindly provide the orders you promised, please.”

In the end, besides Cait I had eight more teens and children crossed out of the list. No kidnapped strangers, for better or worse. They were generally far better health-wise than Cait, but all were equally uninformed about what had just happened to them.

I looked at the assembled ‘goods’. “Just so you’re clear,” I started, then gestured to the crowd of adults behind me. “All of you were prepped for sale by your parents, quite willingly to, judging from the lousy prices. In exchange, Vinebrook gets some measure of security, and they get caps.”

I watched them process the words and made sure Piper kept glaring at the settlers.

“So now, I’ve bought all of you off your parents, making you my slaves...kinda.” I looked at each of them, noting the anger and disbelief. Cait looked utterly broken.

“And so, here’s the deal. Either I drop you off at say… Diamond City or someplace safe and you’re free to go with caps and supplies...” The confusion came back as some of them did a double take. “Or I still free you anyway and you’re free to join me. The work might be tedious, but I’ve got more than enough room, and can promise you that no one will be buying or selling you anymore. … Unless you really want to, I guess.”

I looked back at the equally surprised settlers of Vinebrook and sent them a cold smile. “Oh, and by the by, I didn’t buy whatever trade deal you had with the slavers, and the camp’s been...disbanded. Good luck.”

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