Fredrick Carr's Arc

Chapter 5 of 11

The scouts were already below, mapping the secret stairs, when Fredrick drove up to the vault. Greymire rode beside him. The truck bed held the descent rig and the supply bundles Kira had packed for the deep levels. The old garage waited ahead, its Vault-Tec sign scarred by blast marks. Two doors hung punched full of holes. Fredrick parked and cut the engine. Zelda came out to meet them. She wore a red beret and a medic's bag on her hip. The orange striped cat ran the field hospital nearby, and Brad had told Fredrick she read supplies the way a doctor reads a wound. She did not wave. She walked straight to the truck bed and started counting. "Water. Rope. Two trauma kits." She lifted a strap and looked under it. "You brought the harness. Good. The others always forget the harness." She glanced at Fredrick. "Your mentor said you'd come light. You didn't." "Brad taught me to pack for the fight I don't want," Fredrick said. Zelda almost smiled. She zipped the bundle shut. "Then we'll get along." Logan came around the garage wall with a datapad in his good hand. The brown tabby had rebuilt the vault key and opened the inner door himself. He read machines by what was missing, and it showed in how he moved, careful of the two fingers he'd lost. He nodded at the crates. "Scouts hit the bottom of the stairs," Logan said. "Route's real. Past the collapse, clean." He tapped the pad. "But I need workers who can hold a lamp and not scream. I've got five men waiting on your say." He led them to the garage door. Five recruits stood in the shade there. Two wore old military boots. One carried a wrench like he knew its weight. They had lean, watchful faces. Fredrick had heard of them from Logan's radio calls, vetted men from the depot ruins. "Greymire cleared them this morning," Logan said. "Records, references, all of it." Greymire spoke up from behind. "I checked their old units. No red flags. They'll work." She adjusted her radio pack. "That's my read." Fredrick looked at the five men. He looked at the tools they held and the way they stood ready, not slouched. He walked the line once. One man met his eyes and did not look away. "They look good," Fredrick said. "Sign them." Logan handed over the pad. Fredrick pressed his mark. Five names locked in. Six recruits became eleven. Zelda watched him finish. "Eleven for a job that needs thirty," she said. Flat, not cruel. "And now they go underground." Fredrick pinned the last strap on the descent rig. She was right. He had the men and the gear to send a crew below. But eleven bodies split between the surface base and the deep route left both thin. The stairs were open now. The hard part was who he'd risk sending down them.