Donovan O'Niel's Arc

Chapter 1 of 11

Donovan O'Niel spread his map across the workbench and stabbed a finger at the vault marker. He wanted to salvage the tech inside, but he couldn't do it blind. His plan was bigger than one raid. He meant to build a communications network linking Vault 141 to trade outposts and towns, then use those links to pull salvage from the vault. First he needed to walk in prepared. Three scouts had gone in before him. None came back with their gear. One came back without his partner. Brad Zaxxon leaned over the map beside him. He'd spent eight years in the Rangers, and Donovan trusted his read on a supply list more than anyone's. Brad tapped the vault entrance with a chewed pencil. "You're not carrying enough," Brad said. "Yeah, you mapped the dead zone, but a map won't dig you out if the floor drops. You want rope, spare batteries, cutting tools. And doubles of everything, because down there, no radio means no do-over." He got animated then, listing shielded canisters and clamps and backup power cells until his sentences ran together. Donovan wrote it all down. The list filled a page, then two. "I can't carry this on my back," he said. "And I can't keep it in a tent." "Then stop carrying it," Brad said. "Store it. Between you and me, a base with walls is worth ten trips to a trade post." Donovan looked past the fence outside, the rusted bars and torn chain-link that ringed the yard. Behind it stood an old pre-war garage, brick and timber, the roof still sound. He'd walked past it a dozen times. Now he saw a warehouse. Room for supplies. A roof for an antenna. The first real node in his network. He pitched it to Zelda Verada that evening. Zelda was the Red Hills Traders medic on the vault team, and she controlled the shared stores. She listened without softening her face. "You want to sink our supplies into a fixed building," she said. "Near a vault someone already broke into." "A fixed building is where the network starts," Donovan said. "Radio base on the roof. Supplies inside. I stop hauling and start reaching." Zelda studied the garage across the yard. "Funny what survives when no one keeps score." She nodded once. "Do it. But it's stocked and staffed, or it's a target." Donovan cleared the garage and raised an antenna on the grey tile roof. He wired a radio base station to the wall and stacked the shielded crates inside. Then he hired two hands to run it. Brad brought one himself, a black-and-white cat in a mechanic's jumpsuit who checked every crate seal without being asked. The second was a grey cat in tactical glasses who took the inventory ledger and started counting. By dusk the doors closed on a working warehouse. Donovan had his supply base and his first radio node. The vault was still dark. But now he had a place to reach from.