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The rest of the day was swallowed in motion. Settlers went back to their tasks with new energy, their chatter buzzing with excitement. Children reenacted the test by making machine-gun noises and running around the yard, pretending to drive the "war truck." Sarah retreated to the command post, muttering about needing stronger walls "if we're going to keep firing cannons in the yard." Preston stayed in the field, helping Mel's crew haul fresh parts from the workshop.
Sico lingered near the truck a while longer, letting the cheers die down and the smell of cordite settle over the field. The excitement had already started bleeding into chatter—settlers swapping their own takes on the test, some swearing it was the loudest thing they'd ever heard, others joking that they'd gone half deaf. But the Commander wasn't interested in noise; he wanted substance.
He turned his head slightly, catching Mel as the man jogged back from the workshop with a rag stuffed in his back pocket and grease smudged like battle paint across his cheek. The grin hadn't faded—if anything, it had deepened, like he was living off the adrenaline of the gun's thunder.
Sico's voice cut through the background like a blade through cloth, low and steady but impossible to ignore.
"Mel," he called, his tone not stern but deliberate. "Diagnosis. How did the test go?"
The chatter hushed again, people instinctively quieting when they heard that clipped command voice.
Mel exhaled through his nose, shoulders bouncing once as though he'd been expecting that exact question. He dragged the rag from his pocket, wiped his hands absently, and gave Sico a crooked grin.
"Well, Commander," he began, his words rolling easy but with a craftsman's weight behind them. "I think it's all good—damn good, if you ask me. Truck held, stabilizers did their job, and the welds didn't split. Engine didn't choke, either. That beast roared like she was born for it."
He let the grin fade just a hair, his tone tightening into honesty. "Except for one little twig, like I said earlier: we gotta down the caliber on the AA gun if we want the truck to hold it long-term. The recoil's a bit too hungry for this frame. You push her hard, she'll chew herself apart—axle, suspension, maybe even the mounts. Drop the caliber a notch, though? She'll still shred a vertibird, but she won't rattle herself to pieces in the process."
The words hung in the air for a moment, blunt and practical.
Sico's gaze didn't waver. He studied Mel as though measuring not just the words but the conviction behind them. Finally, he gave a single nod—the kind of nod that wasn't just agreement but authorization.
"Then that's what we do," Sico said quietly, but his voice carried across the yard. "Reliability first. Make it battle-worthy, not a suicide ride."
Mel's grin returned in force, his teeth flashing like he'd just been given permission to chase a wild dream. He clapped his grease-streaked hands together, the sound cracking like a pistol shot.
"You got it, Commander! We'll tune her down, balance the recoil, reinforce the mounts. Give me a couple of days and this beast won't just sing—she'll dance."
Preston, standing nearby, chuckled under his breath. "Dance, huh? I'd like to see that."
Mel smirked, shooting him a sideways look. "Stick around, cowboy. You'll get a front-row seat."
Sarah, who had been watching with her arms still crossed, gave a small shake of her head but couldn't quite mask the glint in her eye. "You're all insane," she muttered, but her voice had softened, less sharp than before. "But fine. If this war chariot keeps our people alive, I'll put up with the racket."
Sico didn't reply to her jab, though the faintest ghost of a smile flickered at the corner of his mouth. Instead, he stepped closer to the truck, his palm brushing briefly across the still-warm steel.
Sico's hand lingered on the truck's steel, feeling the residual warmth from the gun's recoil vibrations, the faint pulse of power still echoing through the frame like a heart that hadn't decided whether to calm down. He let that silence hang for a breath, long enough that everyone watching leaned in just slightly, waiting for his verdict.
Finally, he turned back toward Mel, his eyes narrowing but not with doubt—more with focus, the way a commander threads one step into the next without losing sight of the whole war.
"Mel," Sico said, voice low but cutting clear through the air, "give the AA gun blueprint to the weapons factory. Let them start building it right away."
Mel blinked once, as though caught between pride and the weight of responsibility, then gave a slow, understanding nod.
"And as for the gun mounted on this truck," Sico continued, his hand leaving the steel with a final pat, "when the blueprint's finished, you give that to the factory too. They'll need it. One weapon in one truck doesn't win us the war. We need them in numbers, stationed where they'll matter."
Mel's grin eased into something sharper, more serious. He stuffed the rag back into his pocket, dragging a thumb across his cheek and smudging the grease even further. "Blueprints will be on their desk before sunrise, Commander. I'll make sure of it. And don't worry—I'll strip the big girl here down into diagrams clean enough even that tight-ass at the factory can follow 'em."
That earned a couple of chuckles from the crowd, a ripple of tension breaking. Even Sarah's lips twitched, though she shook her head like she'd never admit to laughing at Mel's antics.
Preston, arms crossed, tilted his head toward Sico. "You thinking of equipping the convoys too? Or keeping this just for settlement defense?"
Sico's gaze drifted out past the field, past the smoke still curling in the horizon, past even the fences that marked Sanctuary's borders. His eyes were elsewhere—tracking supply lines, Brotherhood patrol routes, and the thin, fragile threads that stitched their Republic together.
"Both," he said finally. "Settlements first. Then convoys. We need eyes in the sky and guns to greet them when they come. The Brotherhood's not going to sit back forever. When they bring vertibirds, we'll be ready."
The hush that followed wasn't fear—it was acknowledgment. Everyone present knew it, deep down. The Brotherhood wasn't going to be beaten with muskets and Molotov cocktails. They'd come with steel and wings, and if the Republic wanted to live, they'd have to answer in kind.
Mel broke the silence with a clap of his hands, loud and decisive. "Alright then! You heard the Commander. I'll be drafting until my hands cramp, and when they do, I'll switch hands." He winked toward Preston. "Maybe you can fetch me some of that sludge the mess hall calls coffee. Gonna need it."
Preston rolled his eyes, but his smirk betrayed him. "One condition—you don't blame me when your heart gives out."
"Ha!" Mel barked, pointing a greasy finger. "If my heart gives out, it'll be from love of my work, not the coffee. Don't you worry about that."
Sico allowed the banter for a beat longer, watching the way it softened the edges of fear that had begun to creep into the crowd. But then his voice cut through again, calm but commanding.
"Mel, you'll have what you need. Materials, hands, support. Make sure those blueprints don't just sit in a drawer. I want production rolling within the week."
Mel's grin dimmed into something more resolute. He gave a salute—not military sharp, but something that carried the same respect. "Aye, Commander. Consider it done."
The sun had begun to sink by then, bleeding streaks of orange and red across the broken skyline. The air smelled of burnt powder and hot steel, but there was something else beneath it too—something almost electric. Hope. Fragile, yes, but real.
Settlers had begun to drift back to their duties, conversations buzzing with the memory of the test fire. The children ran along the dirt paths, shouting and re-enacting the sound of the cannon like it was some grand game. The older folk shook their heads at the noise but smiled all the same.
Sico stayed by the truck, Sarah at his side now, her eyes still fixed on the weapon as though weighing whether it was truly salvation or just another temptation to doom.
"You're certain about this?" she asked quietly, voice low enough only he could hear. "Giving factories blueprints for weapons like this… It changes everything. This isn't just defense anymore. This is escalation."
Sico's reply was slow, deliberate. "It's survival. Escalation is when you want more power. Survival is when you refuse to die quietly."
Sarah studied him for a moment, her jaw tight, then finally gave a reluctant nod. "Alright. Just… don't let us turn into the thing we're fighting."
Sico's gaze remained steady, fixed on the horizon. "That's why I need people like you to remind me."
For a heartbeat, the sharp commander's mask slipped just enough for Sarah to see the man beneath it—the one carrying the weight of a republic on his shoulders, trying not to let it crush him.
She gave a small, wry smile. "Don't worry, Commander. I'll nag you into staying human."
He almost smiled back.
The last glimmers of orange sun clung to the horizon as Sico finally pulled himself away from the field. The laughter of children pretending to fire invisible cannons followed him for a while, their voices crackling through the smoky dusk like sparks refusing to die out. It was a good sound, a reminder of why any of this mattered—but it also pressed the urgency deeper into his chest. Children could laugh today, yes. But tomorrow? That depended on what he did tonight.
He walked in silence, boots crunching the dirt as he made his way toward Sanctuary's center, then beyond, until the lights of the Freemasons HQ came into view. The building rose from the rubble with a kind of deliberate pride—brick and steel reinforced with scavenged concrete, banners stitched from cloth dyed in deep crimson and gold. It wasn't grand, not in the way the pre-war world would have understood grand, but it carried weight. It carried permanence. A beacon to anyone who needed to believe that order could exist in the wasteland.
The guards at the door straightened as Sico approached, their rifles snapping to attention at their sides. They didn't salute—it wasn't that kind of army—but their nods were crisp, their respect unspoken yet heavy. Sico returned the gesture with the briefest tilt of his head and pushed through the door.
Inside, the HQ carried a hum of activity even at this hour. Men and women leaned over maps spread across wooden tables, candlelight and lanterns flickering across faces lined by stress and sleepless nights. Runners darted through the halls with reports, their boots echoing on the wood. Somewhere deeper in the building, a typewriter clacked with steady determination, the rhythm like a heartbeat.
Sico threaded through it all, not breaking stride until he reached the far corridor that led to Magnolia's office. Her door, painted a muted green, stood closed but not silent—faint music seeped through, the tail end of some old jazz record crackling in the background. Magnolia always said she needed it, that numbers without music felt too much like chains.
He paused for just a breath before knocking. A voice answered, smooth and unmistakably hers.
"Come in."
The door swung open on well-oiled hinges, revealing an office that was at once chaotic and elegant. Papers lay in neat but towering stacks across her desk, inkpots and ledgers lined up like soldiers in formation. A single lamp burned on the corner, its glow soft, almost golden, warming the room against the cold stone walls. Magnolia herself sat behind the desk, shoulders draped in a deep crimson shawl, dark hair pinned up in a way that looked effortless but wasn't. Her eyes—sharp, always calculating—lifted from a ledger to meet Sico's.
"Sico," she said, and her voice carried that smoky warmth that made every word sound halfway between invitation and interrogation. "You're either here to make my life harder, or to make it more interesting. Which is it tonight?"
Sico stepped inside, closing the door behind him. He didn't answer immediately. Instead, he took the seat opposite her desk, resting his forearms on his knees, leaning in just enough to show this wasn't small talk.
"Magnolia," he said evenly, "agree on the budget that the weapons factory will send you. They will going to put it through your desk soon. We need it cleared to begin building the AA gun."
There it was. No fanfare, no circling around the subject. Just the weight of necessity, dropped like a stone in the middle of her neatly balanced books.
Magnolia's lips curved—not a smile, exactly, but something between amusement and skepticism. She leaned back in her chair, fingers lacing together as she studied him.
"Straight to business," she mused. "Not even a hello. You've been spending too much time with Sarah, Commander. She's rubbing off on you."
Sico allowed the jab, but his expression didn't waver. "Time is one thing we don't have the luxury of wasting."
Her brow arched at that. She let the silence stretch, filling the space with the faint crackle of the record player. Then, finally, she leaned forward, elbows on the desk.
"Do you know what you're asking?" Magnolia said, her voice softer now but edged with steel. "An anti-air gun isn't a couple of rifles or a batch of Molotovs. The factory will ask for steel, copper, circuitry, fuel, hands. All of it comes with a number, and all of it comes out of a ledger I'm already bleeding dry trying to keep balanced. You tell me to 'agree on the budget' like it's a line item. It isn't. It's a mountain."
Sico didn't flinch. "Then we climb it."
Magnolia gave a short laugh, low and disbelieving, and shook her head. "You sound like Preston when he's trying to convince settlers to build a wall with nothing but scrap wood and stubbornness." Her gaze sharpened again. "Tell me why. Tell me why this can't wait until we've secured more resources. Until we've strengthened the Republic's coffers. Because right now, the numbers don't want to say yes. And you know I don't sign off on what the numbers don't allow."
Sico leaned back slightly, his eyes never leaving hers. His voice, when it came, wasn't raised—but it carried.
"Because the Brotherhood isn't going to wait for our coffers to fill, Magnolia. They won't wait until our settlements are stronger or until our children are grown. They'll come when it suits them, with vertibirds and power armor and weapons that'll burn this Republic to the ground in an afternoon. What I saw today—the gun Mel built—it's the first thing I've seen that made me believe we could stop them when they're in the air. If we wait, we're gambling with lives. If we build now, we're buying time. And time is worth more than caps."
The conviction in his words filled the room like smoke, heavy and inescapable. Magnolia held his gaze, searching it for cracks, for anything less than absolute belief. But there was none.
At last, she exhaled, slow and deliberate. She leaned back in her chair again, staring at the ceiling for a moment before answering.
"You always did have a way of making war sound like survival," she said quietly. Then her eyes flicked back down to him, sharp as knives. "Fine. When the treasurer brings me the request, I'll clear it. But I'm not giving you a blank check, Sico. You'll get what the numbers can stretch, not what your dreams demand. And when the people come to me asking why the food rations are smaller or why their roofs are leaking while you're building anti-aircraft guns, I'll be sending them to your door. You'll answer them, not me."
Sico nodded once. "I'll answer them."
Magnolia studied him for a long moment more, then reached for the bottle on the corner of her desk. It was whiskey, the label faded almost to nothing. She poured two glasses, slid one across to him.
"To escalation," she said dryly, lifting hers.
Sico took the glass, but his eyes were steady. "To survival."
They drank.
The whiskey burned on the way down, not unpleasantly, but with that familiar roughness that seemed to scrape clean whatever tension still clung to his chest. Magnolia set her glass down with a decisive clink, already reaching for another ledger with her free hand as though the conversation had never happened. For her, survival and numbers were always bound together—when one ledger closed, another opened.
Sico, however, lingered. He let the silence stretch a moment longer, studying her across the lamplit desk, the faint shadows playing over her features. She was tired—he could see it even beneath her composure. The shawl slipping off one shoulder, the faint tightness at the corners of her eyes. Tired, but unbroken. Magnolia was built of sharper steel than most.
He nodded once, almost a bow, then rose to his feet.
"I'll leave you to your music," he said.
Magnolia gave the faintest smirk, her pen already scratching again across the page. "Go make your paperwork sing, Commander. That's the only music I'll be listening for at the next Congress."
Her words followed him out the door, half challenge, half jest, but they settled heavy on his shoulders all the same.
The corridors of the HQ were quieter now, though not silent. The runners had thinned, their urgent footsteps replaced by the slower tread of guards making rounds, the murmurs of men and women huddled over their last reports of the night. Lanterns burned low along the walls, casting long shadows that stretched like fingers across the floorboards.
Sico's boots echoed in the hallway as he made his way back toward his office. Each step seemed to grow heavier, not from fatigue—though that was there too, grinding at the edges of his body—but from the weight of what he carried in his head. A thousand moving parts, all tugging against each other: resources, soldiers, alliances, enemies. And now, the AA gun. A new piece on the board, one that could change everything—or bleed them dry trying.
When he reached his door, the brass handle felt colder than usual in his grip. He pushed inside.
The office was small by comparison to Magnolia's, but it carried his mark in every corner. Maps pinned to corkboards, their surfaces crowded with markings and scrawled notes. Shelves stacked with binders, folders, and loose sheets of scavenged paper, some filled with his own cramped handwriting, others bearing the formal seals of the Republic. A lantern hung on a hook near the window, throwing a warm, uneven glow across the room.
On the desk in the center, a neat pile of documents waited for him. They weren't neat because he was a tidy man—quite the opposite. They were neat because Sarah had left them there earlier in the day, and Sarah did not tolerate chaos when it came to paperwork.
Sico closed the door behind him, shrugged off his coat, and hung it on the back of the chair before sinking down into it. For a moment, he just sat there, staring at the pile.
This was the part no one sang songs about. Not the gunfights, not the heroics, not the rallies. Paperwork. The lifeblood of a Republic was not forged in bullets but in ink. And tonight, that ink had to tell the story of why an anti-air gun mattered more than roofs that didn't leak, more than a few extra rations, more than blankets for winter. It had to justify itself, line by line, number by number, until even the skeptics on the Congress floor couldn't deny it.
He exhaled, long and slow, then pulled the first sheet toward him.
The requisition form was stamped across the top with the familiar crimson seal of the Freemasons Quartermaster Office. Beneath it, neat lines for resources, quantities, and signatures. Blank for now, but waiting.
Sico dipped his pen in ink and began the work.
Steel: 400 units.
He paused, tapping the nib against the page. Mel had said 350 would suffice, but he added fifty more. Not because he didn't trust Mel—he trusted him more than most—but because in war, nothing ever stayed neat. Steel bent, broke, cracked. Better to ask for more now than to beg for it later.
Copper wiring: 250 units.
Circuitry always ate more copper than expected. He made a note in the margin: Request scavenging teams sweep Lexington industrial ruins.
Fuel (generator use): 15 barrels per month.
His pen hesitated. That was a heavy ask. Fuel was already stretched thin, powering water purifiers, settlement lights, transport vehicles. He scribbled an asterisk beside it: Propose Congress divert one caravan from caravans East. Someone would argue, of course. They always did. But it had to go in.
Manpower:
Here, he slowed. Numbers weren't just numbers when it came to people. Each figure was a face, someone's father, daughter, brother.
– 25 engineers (assembly, mechanics, circuit repair)
– 40 laborers (steel shaping, structural work)
– 10 machinists (precision fabrication)
– 12 gunners (training, rotation)
– 6 officers (oversight, command)
He underlined it, heavy. Manpower. That would sting. Every body pulled here was one less for patrols, for farming, for the dozen other tasks the Republic needed. He made a second note in the margin: Propose recruitment drive for civilian volunteers (non-combat roles).
By the time he reached the bottom of the sheet, his pen felt heavier in his hand. He set it down and rubbed his eyes. Already, the list looked like a mouth wide open, waiting to swallow half the Republic whole.
But this was only the start.
The next document was a cost analysis sheet. Numbers. Always numbers. Magnolia's shadow lingered here more than anywhere else—he could almost hear her voice over his shoulder, reminding him that each figure was another weight on her scales.
He calculated the steel first. Estimated scavenging yields, compared them against caravan costs. Then copper. Then circuitry, which was already scarce enough to spark fights between divisions. Each calculation ended in the same quiet truth: they couldn't afford it. Not cleanly. Not without something else giving way.
That was when the real work began—not filling lines, but shaping arguments. This wasn't about hiding the costs; it was about reframing them.
He began drafting the justification section in his own steady hand:
"The Brotherhood of Steel maintains aerial superiority through vertibirds, which our current defenses cannot adequately counter. The loss of even one settlement to aerial strike could destabilize the Republic's entire western line. By establishing a prototype anti-air gun at Sanctuary, we secure not only the headquarters but the surrounding settlements within its range. This investment, though steep, prevents losses that would outweigh its cost tenfold in the event of a Brotherhood incursion."
He leaned back, reading it over. It sounded almost clinical on paper, stripped of the urgency he felt in his chest. But that was what Congress needed. Numbers and reasons, not fire.
Still, he added one more line, almost under his breath as he wrote it:
"Every barrel of steel, every drop of fuel, every hour of labor spent here is not spent in vanity—it is spent to ensure the laughter of our children tomorrow."
He stared at that line for a long time before setting the pen down again. Too sentimental? Maybe. But sometimes even Congress needed to be reminded why the numbers mattered at all.
Hours passed. The lantern burned lower, the pool of light shrinking across the desk. Pages filled with his handwriting, margins crowded with notes, a growing stack of completed forms shifting from one side of the desk to the other. Outside, the night deepened, the murmurs of the HQ fading into silence as one by one the others surrendered to sleep.
But Sico kept on. Drafting, revising, cross-checking. His hand cramped around the pen, ink staining his fingertips. His eyes burned, but he pressed forward, fueled less by stubbornness than by that gnawing urgency in his chest—the one that had followed him from the children's laughter in the field all the way here.
At some point, he rose and crossed to the window, pushing it open to let in the night air. The stars above were faint, obscured by the haze that never seemed to leave the wasteland, but a few cut through. Cold and distant, but present. He breathed them in, the chill clearing his head for a moment, before returning to his desk.
By the time the last page was signed, the ink still glistening wet, the lantern had burned so low it was little more than a dull ember in glass. He set the pen down at last, flexing his stiff fingers, and stacked the papers neatly together.
It wasn't perfect. It never was. But it was enough. Enough to bring to Congress. Enough to stand behind. Enough to fight for.
Sico sat back in his chair, letting the silence of the room close around him. For a moment, he allowed himself to imagine the future—not the battle, not the costs, but the sight of an AA gun rising against the skyline, standing sentinel over Sanctuary.
________________________________________________
• Name: Sico
• Stats :
S: 8,44
P: 7,44
E: 8,44
C: 8,44
I: 9,44
A: 7,45
L: 7
• Skills: advance Mechanic, Science, and Shooting skills, intermediate Medical, Hand to Hand Combat, Lockpicking, Hacking, Persuasion, and Drawing Skills
• Inventory: 53.280 caps, 10mm Pistol, 1500 10mm rounds, 22 mole rats meat, 17 mole rats teeth, 1 fragmentation grenade, 6 stimpak, 1 rad x, 6 fusion core, computer blueprint, modern TV blueprint, camera recorder blueprint, 1 set of combat armor, Automatic Assault Rifle, 1.500 5.56mm rounds, power armor T51 blueprint, Electric Motorcycle blueprint, T-45 power armor, Minigun, 1.000 5mm rounds, Cryolator, 200 cryo cell, Machine Gun Turret Mk1 blueprint, electric car blueprint, Kellogg gun, Righteous Authority, Ashmaker, Furious Power Fist, Full set combat armor blueprint, M240 7.62mm machine guns blueprint, Automatic Assault Rifle blueprint, and Humvee blueprint.
• Active Quest:-