Jace was woken by footsteps in the hallway.
They were not cautious, careful steps.
They were boots pounding over wooden floorboards, thump, thump, thump, as if someone were rushing off to do something.
He opened his eyes and stared at the gray ceiling above him for two seconds before remembering where he was.
Diamond City.
The Dugout Inn.
Room 2.
There was already light outside the window.
Not bright sunlight, but the gray-white daylight of an overcast Commonwealth morning, seeping through the gaps in the curtains and falling across the empty bed opposite him.
Sturges’s bed was empty, the blanket piled up in a messy heap.
Jace rolled over.
His arm had gone numb from being pinned under him, and his mouth was dry with the stale taste of a hangover.
He had not drunk much last night, but this body had probably gone too long without touching alcohol.
He sat up, rubbed the back of his neck, and heard his bones crack twice.
When he went downstairs, Sturges was sitting on the sofa, holding a steaming cup of something.
Codsworth hovered beside the counter, his optical eyes blinking as he talked with Yefim about who knew what.
“Awake?” Sturges looked up.
“Thought you’d sleep a little longer.”
Jace did not answer.
He walked to the counter.
Yefim was wiping a cup.
When he saw Jace come over, he gestured with his chin toward a tray beside him.
“Breakfast, if you’re paying extra.
Bread, grilled meat, and a cup of coffee.
Real coffee, from Vault 81.
Not the kind boiled from nuts.”
Jace glanced at the tray.
The bread was a little burned, the meat was cold, but the coffee really was a proper brown, with a thin layer of oil floating on the surface.
In the Wasteland, something like that was rarer than bullets.
Sturges’s eyes landed on the cup of coffee.
His Adam’s apple bobbed once, and then he quickly looked away.
Jace picked up the tray, sat beside Sturges, and pushed the coffee over to him.
“Drink it.”
Sturges froze for a moment.
“That’s yours.”
“I’m not used to it.” Jace took a bite of the cold grilled meat.
“Too bitter.”
Sturges stared at the cup for two seconds, then picked it up.
He did not drink right away.
First, he leaned in and smelled it.
Only then did he start taking small sips, savoring each mouthful for a long time.
Jace kept his head down and finished his breakfast.
After eating, the first thing to do was exchange the caps.
The Diamond Card was convenient, but it felt too light in his hand, with no real weight to it.
When it came to buying things, caps felt more practical.
Heavy, solid, weighing on his shoulder and making him feel more at ease.
Following Arturo’s directions, the three of them found a small window beside the mayor’s office.
A woman wearing glasses sat inside, drawing on her eyebrows in front of a dusty mirror.
When she saw them approach, she slowly put down her eyebrow pencil, took the Diamond Card, and inserted it into an old terminal.
The terminal hummed for a while.
The woman tapped rapidly on the keyboard a few times, then pushed a bag of caps through the window.
“Two thousand.
Count them if you want.”
Codsworth floated over, weighed it with his mechanical hand, and his optical eye flashed twice.
“Weight confirmed, sir.”
Jace stuffed the bag into his cloth pack.
The pile of caps weighed heavily on his shoulder, and when he walked, he could hear the faint clinking inside.
Ding, ding, ding.
He actually found the sound pleasant.
The second thing was renting Brahmin.
Behind the market was an open lot enclosed by a simple wooden fence.
Several gray, dirty-looking Brahmin lay inside, slowly chewing their cud.
Their two pairs of eyes were half-open, half-closed, as if nothing in the world could interest them.
An old man sat beside the fence, wearing a battered straw hat with half the brim sagging down, a whip gripped in his hand.
He was picking his teeth with the tip of it.
“Renting Brahmin?” The old man looked them over, his gaze lingering on the T-45 for a moment.
“North only.
I don’t take jobs south.”
“Sanctuary Hills.”
The old man thought for a moment.
“North, huh?
That’ll take most of a day.
Fifty caps per Brahmin per day, two hundred deposit.
You pay if they get lost or die.”
Jace asked, “How much if one dies?”
The old man pointed the tip of his whip at the Brahmin inside the fence.
“They’re all grown.
They can work, they can carry cargo.
If you get one killed, eight hundred caps, not one cap less.
And you bring me back the body.
Hide, meat, bones, all of it’s useful.”
Sturges muttered beside him, “Eight hundred… worth more than a person.”
The old man had sharp ears.
He grinned, showing a mouthful of yellow teeth.
“Young man, the Wasteland’s full of people.
Not so many Brahmin.
Anyone who knows farming understands that.”
Jace did not waste any more words.
He counted out two hundred and fifty caps and handed them over.
The rental fee for five Brahmin, plus a thousand-Cap deposit, came to twelve hundred and fifty in total.
He had deliberately rented one extra, worried the cargo would not all fit.
The old man took the caps, tucked them into his clothes, and slowly stood up.
He flicked the tip of his whip toward the Brahmin.
“Pick them yourselves.
Once you’ve picked, lead them out.
Bring them back tomorrow or the day after.
I’m here every day.”
Jace walked into the pen and chose three that looked a little sturdier.
Sturges chose two.
Codsworth hovered nearby, his optical eyes blinking, apparently full of curiosity toward these four-legged creatures.
“Sir, would you like me to help lead them?”
“Can you hold them?”
“Of course, sir.” Codsworth extended a mechanical arm.
“While my gripping apparatus was designed primarily for delicate operations, leading several Brahmin should present no issue.
I just consulted my database regarding the handling of large herbivores.”
“Fine,” Jace cut him off.
“You lead them.”
Codsworth floated in front of one Brahmin and gently placed his mechanical hand on the rope.
The Brahmin lowered its head, glanced at him, snorted, and went back to chewing.
Five Brahmin slowly made their way through the wilderness outside Diamond City.
The goods had all been picked up.
At Arturo’s shop, the T-60 core mounting bracket had indeed arrived.
It was refurbished, but solidly made.
The hydraulic lines had been collected as well.
In addition, Jace had bought a batch of farm tools, shovels, hoes, sickles, and a batch of hand tools, hammers, saws, wrenches, along with several large rolls of fabric and some materials that could not be found near Sanctuary Hills, such as copper coils and ceramic parts.
He had also bought some medicine.
Anti-inflammatory drugs, hemostatic powder, painkillers, all the basics.
It was not that he did not want to buy more.
He simply could not find anything better.
Diamond City’s doctors were short on medicine themselves, so being able to spare this much was already a favor.
All the goods were divided into pack baskets on the backs of the five Brahmin, heavy and full.
The Brahmin moved slowly but steadily, swaying with each step.
The things in the baskets creaked and groaned with their pace, like a song with no beginning or end.
Jace wore the T-45 and walked at the front of the group.
Every step of the power armor landed with a dull thud, thud, carrying far across the Wasteland like a moving drum.
Sturges and the other two guards followed alongside, holding branches in their hands and waving them every so often to hurry along the slower Brahmin.
Codsworth floated at the very front, all five ropes in his hands.
Or more precisely, wrapped around his mechanical arms.
He floated steadily, and the five Brahmin followed at an unhurried pace.
Somehow, not a single one wandered off.
His optical eyes scanned the surroundings from time to time, maintaining a robot’s usual state of alert.
The sky was still gray, but it did not rain.
Every now and then, they could see one or two figures in the Wasteland, wandering among the ruins.
When those people saw the group from a distance, especially the power armor at the front and the floating robot leading five Brahmin, they stood for a while, then retreated back into the ruins.
“Lot smoother than the trip here,” Sturges said.
Jace did not answer.
He only nodded.
By the time the walls of Sanctuary Hills appeared in sight, the sky was almost dark.
The wall, pieced together from wood and sheet metal, was low and crooked, reinforced with wire in some places.
But in the gray dusk, it looked better than anything else.
A figure moved along the top of the wall.
A sentry.
When he saw them, he waved and shouted something, though the words were too far away to hear.
Soon, the gate in the wall opened.
Jace drove the Brahmin inside.
Mama Murphy sat in her broken chair, eyes closed, muttering under her breath.
Several residents were cleaning up near the workshop.
When they saw the group return, they all stopped what they were doing, their eyes falling on the cargo-laden Brahmin.
Anthony, the quiet resident who rarely spoke, was wiping a rusty wrench at the workshop entrance.
When he saw Jace, he stood up.
His eyes swept over the pack baskets on the Brahmin’s backs, and a rare trace of a smile appeared on his face.
It was faint, only a twitch at the corner of his mouth, but Jace saw it.
Preston pushed through the crowd from the back.
He was wearing an old Minutemen coat, his laser musket slung over his shoulder.
When he saw Jace and the Brahmin, his eyes immediately lit up.
“You’re back!” He hurried over.
“What did you buy?”
“Farm tools.” Jace unloaded a pack basket from a Brahmin’s back and set it on the ground.
“Fabric.
Medicine.
And some power armor parts.”
Preston crouched and reached out to touch the shovel in the basket.
His movements were gentle, as if he were touching something precious.
He raised his head and looked at Jace, wanting to say something, but swallowed it back.
Just then, Mama Murphy’s voice came from the corner.
Faint and distant, as if drifting over from somewhere far away.
“It’s time.”
Everyone turned to look at her.
Her eyes were closed, and the wrinkles on her face looked even deeper in the twilight, like a dried-up riverbed.
Her fingers trembled slightly, pointing in Jace’s direction, while she mumbled something no one could make out.
Then she suddenly opened her eyes and stared straight at him.
Those eyes were cloudy, but at that moment, they shone with a frightening brightness.
“I see… red light… stars lined up in a row… the dead standing up…”
Sturges took a step back.
Mama Murphy continued, her voice growing clearer, deeper.
“I see him… standing on stone… holding that gun… not the one he picked up, but another one… the older one… Everyone is watching him… waiting for him to speak…”
She stared at Jace.
In her cloudy eyes were reflected the twilight, the lights of the distant workshop, and something Jace himself could not see clearly.
“It’s time.”
After saying that, she closed her eyes and shrank back into her chair, as if nothing had happened.
Preston was silent for several seconds.
Then he stood and walked up to Jace.
There was a strange expression on his face.
Not excitement, not nerves, but something heavy that had been pressed deep in his heart for a long time.
Now it had surfaced, in his eyes and between his brows.
“Jace.” His voice was lower than usual.
“You saved us.
You’re the reason we’re still alive.”
Jace said nothing.
“What Mama Murphy said… I don’t really understand it.
But there’s one thing I do understand.” Preston took a deep breath.
“The Minutemen need a General.
Someone with direction.
Someone who can lead people forward.”
He looked Jace in the eyes.
“You have the ability.
You were willing to go to Diamond City, willing to lead the way in power armor, willing to bring back shovels and fabric.”
He held out his hand.
That hand was calloused and scarred, with old rough patches worn in by the laser musket.
That hand had survived many years in the Wasteland, endured many battles, and lost many people.
Now it reached toward Jace, steady, without the slightest tremor.
“Jace, will you be the General of the Minutemen?”
The surroundings were very quiet.
The guards who had followed Jace to Diamond City stood not far away, watching.
Anthony set down the wrench in his hand.
Mama Murphy had her eyes closed, the corner of her mouth curved in a faint, barely visible smile.
Sturges stood behind Jace, motionless.
The twilight deepened.
Jace lowered his head and looked at Preston’s outstretched hand.
Many images flashed through his mind.
The inn in Diamond City, the drunken man mumbling about an underwater Vault, the ninety-meter-tall shadow in the Glowing Sea, and the words, “let the taller people hold it up.”
All of those things were huge, far away, and heavy.
The hand in front of him was small, close, and real.
He reached out and took Preston’s hand.
A smile appeared on Preston’s face.
The slightly awkward smile of someone who had not smiled in a very long time.
He turned to the Minutemen and announced in a deep voice:
“The Minutemen now have a new General.”
Silence held for one second.
Then someone called softly, “General.”
Another voice followed.
“General.”
The voices were low and heavy, but firm.
One after another, like stones falling into water, sending ripples spreading outward.
Even Mama Murphy rocked gently in her chair, as if nodding without a word.
Jace stood in the twilight, looking at these people.
They were poor.
Weak.
Few.
Only a dozen or so people, a few broken houses, and a crooked wall.
But at that moment, in their eyes, he saw a beam of light.
He did not know what that light was called.
He only knew that from this moment on, that light had been placed in his hands.
He stood there, waiting for the cries of “General” to slowly fade.
Then he spoke.
His voice was not loud, but everyone heard him clearly.
“The General’s first order is this.”
“Unload the cargo.”