565. Aftermath from the Mirelurks Invasion

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Just stood there, beside them, staring into the fire. And for the first time since dawn, he allowed himself a single, exhausted breath. It was over, for now.

Sico remained there a moment longer, eyes fixed on the swirling smoke, its dark tendrils clawing at the pale afternoon sky like the dying ghosts of the Mirelurk horde. The fire crackled. The wind rolled in from the coast, pushing the stench of charred shell and scorched brine across the cliffs. All around him, the aftermath was being documented in silence—soldiers resting in their gear, medics tending to wounds, engineers hauling debris away from key defensive positions.

And still, Sico's mind ticked forward.

He turned to MacCready and Preston, voice low and firm.

"Get the word out—tell the squads to start harvesting. Mirelurk meat."

Preston blinked, surprised. "Sir?"

"It's valuable," Sico continued. "We're not wasting a single crab. Clean kills, clean sections. No bile sacs, no ruptured organs—just muscle and edible cuts. Anything we can't eat, we sell. Anything we can't sell, we salt and store. This wasn't just a battle—it's a windfall."

MacCready gave a dry chuckle, pulling the cigarette from his lips. "Hell of a seafood buffet, huh?"

Sico didn't smile. "It'll feed settlements from Quincy to Sanctuary. And bring caps back into the treasury. Tell the quartermasters to prep storage crates. Salt lines. Ice shipments. Everything."

Preston gave a short nod. "I'll see to it personally."

MacCready flicked the cigarette to the ground and ground it beneath his boot. "Alright. Guess we're butcher boys now."

As the two moved off to give the order, Sico turned back toward the Castle. The ramparts rose over the beach like the ribs of a broken leviathan—scored with soot, splashed with green ichor, and scarred in places where the Queen's acid or her spawn had done their worst.

He didn't need to be an engineer to know damage when he saw it.

The wall had held—but only just.

He made his way up the slope, stepping over trenches, ducking beneath exposed scaffolding, until he reached the stone causeway leading to the main wall. The familiar outline of Ronnie Shaw waited there, arms crossed as she stared out at the still-burning beach, her expression unreadable.

She heard his boots before he spoke.

"Ronnie."

She turned slightly, one brow raised. "General."

"I need to see it," he said simply, nodding toward the wall.

Ronnie gave a tired sigh, then gestured for him to follow. "Come on, then. You're not gonna like it."

They walked together across the battlements, moving past sandbags still slick with blood and shattered turrets gutted by acid. Below them, the courtyard was alive with recovery efforts—mechanics shouting about spare parts, soldiers refitting weapons, radio operators testing comms that had shorted during the night's battle.

Ronnie stopped near a gaping fracture in the wall where two entire stones had collapsed inward, leaving a jagged wound that faced the sea.

"Here," she said, her voice clipped. "This is the worst of it."

Sico stepped close, running a gloved hand over the stone. It was still damp, the scent of bile embedded in the cracks. The damage was worse than he'd feared—beneath the fractured surface, the mortar had crumbled inwards, exposing a weakness that could collapse entirely if hit again.

"Queen's acid," Ronnie said quietly. "Got her attention when we peppered her legs with Sentinels. She reared up and spat straight into this point. Burned through the stone like rotgut through stomach lining. And this ain't the only place."

Sico knelt, pressing his fingers into the softened mortar. It crumbled to touch.

"How many weak points?" he asked.

"Three major ones," Ronnie replied. "Six minor. We held because of the Sentinels and your plan. But another attack like this… with just slightly worse luck? They'd be over the wall."

Sico stood slowly. "Then we reinforce. Today."

Ronnie nodded. "I've already got engineers drawing up the patch grid. But we need more concrete. And steel sheeting. The rebar we've got won't be enough."

"I'll get you what you need," Sico said firmly. "Put together the full list. I'll radio Sarah—see what she can source from Sanctuary and the southern supply lines."

Ronnie studied him for a long moment. "You're not stopping, are you?"

He looked back at the sea, still choked in the smoke of burning monsters.

"No," he said. "Because they won't stop either. This wasn't random. That Queen knew where to strike. This was a test—and we barely passed."

Ronnie's jaw clenched. "I'll triple the guard. Rotate two shifts instead of one. Everyone sleeps in gear."

"Good," Sico muttered. "We're not going back to how things were. Not after today."

They lingered there for a while, watching the sun climb higher through the smoke. Below, a group of soldiers moved from corpse to corpse with cleavers and gloves, sawing through chitin and hauling red slabs of Mirelurk flesh into crates. Others dragged broken armor away from the ramparts, or sifted through wreckage to salvage usable parts.

The Castle was still standing—but only barely.

And yet… there was pride, too.

They had held.

They had won.

Later that evening, as the smoke began to drift east and the wind changed, Sico returned to the war room beneath the Castle. Maps were still scattered across the table from the planning stages of the operation—grid layouts, artillery range diagrams, settlement risk charts.

He didn't touch them.

Instead, he poured himself a cup of stale black coffee and sat on the edge of the table, staring at the wall in silence.

The war room was quiet now—too quiet. The kind of silence that settles over a place not because peace has returned, but because exhaustion has beaten back the noise. The walls were thick, and below ground, the muffled sounds of the Castle's slow resurrection—hammer strikes, shouted orders, the occasional clatter of salvaged parts—barely reached inside.

Sico leaned forward, cradling the chipped ceramic mug between his hands. The coffee was cold, bitter, and he drank it anyway.

Above the table, the Castle's main operations radio sat on its mount, a dented and weather-worn relic salvaged from the ruins of the old Minutemen signal towers. A red light blinked steady on its console—powered, alive, waiting. He set the mug aside, straightened up, and reached for the receiver. There was no hesitation in his movement, but there was weight behind it—he knew this wasn't just a supply request.

This was a line being drawn.

He adjusted the dials, the static whirring and sputtering until he found the channel they'd assigned to Sanctuary operations. He keyed the mic, held it for a beat.

"This is Castle Actual calling Sanctuary. Come in, Sanctuary."

There was a pause—just long enough to think maybe the signal hadn't cleared the coastal interference. Then a voice came through—clear, strong, and unmistakably hers.

"This is Sanctuary command. Sarah here. Sico, that you?"

Relief flooded him in a quiet wave. He leaned into the mic.

"Yeah. I'm here. We held, Sarah. The Castle is still standing."

He could almost hear her exhale, a subtle hitch of breath through the speaker.

"I heard. We caught the end of your last transmission. How is the Mirelurks?"

He nodded, then remembered she couldn't see him.

"Worse," he said. "A very large horde. Spawn, hunters, and a Queen—one of the biggest I've ever seen. She hit the wall hard, coordinated. Got some of the bastards up and over the embankments. Ronnie says the defenses held, but barely. We've got damage to the western battlements—three major fractures, six minor. Acid burns. Structural weakness."

A quiet pause on the other end. Then Sarah's voice, lower now, serious.

"Shit."

"Exactly," he said. "Ronnie's already drawing up a reinforcement plan. But we're low on materials—concrete, steel sheeting, rebar. We've used up most of what we had stockpiled."

"I've got some things in the south depot," she said, already thinking it through. "And I know Hancock team been collecting scrap out near the 95 ruins. What's the list look like?"

Sico turned and grabbed the clipboard Ronnie had left before heading back to supervise repairs. It was covered in grease-pencil notes and messy shorthand, but the essentials were all there.

"Concrete—fifteen pallets minimum. We'll take more if we can store it. Steel sheeting, five hundred square feet. Rebar, high-gauge, at least twenty coils. Masonry sealant. Rivets, brackets, anchor bolts. Half a dozen generator cables—we lost a tower when one of the acid sacks shorted it."

He paused, then added: "Oh, and ice. As much as you can get. We're harvesting Mirelurk meat. We've got crates lined up, but it'll spoil without proper storage."

Sarah gave a soft whistle through her teeth.

"You're not wasting a thing, are you?"

"We can't afford to," Sico said. "We're salting what we can, but ice'll keep the fresh cuts from rotting. It's good meat—dense, protein-rich. I want crates going to Quincy, Somerville, Hangman's Alley. Anyplace with kids or elders. What we don't eat, we sell."

"You're thinking like a statesman," she murmured.

He shook his head. "I'm thinking like a survivor."

A pause. Then her voice again.

"Alright. I'll get the boys moving. Robert's convoy is due back tomorrow—I'll have him re-route to the southern storage yards and pull what we can. The rest, I'll source from Graygarden and Oberland. Give me until tomorrow night, maybe the day after at worst. We'll send the shipment under armed guard."

Sico exhaled, relief settling into his chest like a slow breath after holding it too long.

"Thanks, Sarah. You're saving lives."

"We all are," she said. "You just get that wall reinforced and keep them safe."

"I will."

She hesitated for a moment, then said, softer now, "You okay, Sico? I mean, really?"

He glanced toward the war room door—toward the sounds of hammers, the stink of ichor, the weight of the dead.

"No," he said, quietly honest. "But I will be."

There was silence on the line, and it stretched just long enough to be comforting.

"I'll call again tomorrow," Sarah said. "Stay sharp. And… thanks for holding."

The radio clicked silent. Sico held the receiver for a moment longer, then set it gently back into its cradle. The static returned, whispering faintly beneath the hum of Castle's backup generator.

He stared at the map table a while longer, then stood and stepped out of the war room.

The corridor outside smelled like salt and oil and blood. The kind of scent that sank into clothes, into skin, into memory. He moved through the halls slowly, checking in on the medics' triage tents, then up toward the ramparts where night had begun to fall in earnest. A low orange haze clung to the edge of the ocean, mingling with the last of the smoke.

Soldiers moved like shadows now, quieter, more methodical. The initial surge of adrenaline had faded—what remained was grit. Persistence. The stubborn, grinding spirit that made the Minutemen dangerous even when outnumbered.

Below, the courtyard had turned into a butcher's lane. Mirelurk corpses lay split and gutted in neat rows. Teams of workers hauled slabs of meat onto sleds and dragged them toward the central crates. A few people had already lit fires for rendering fat, the smell of it thick and greasy in the night air.

And at the edge of the courtyard, beneath a hanging tarp turned temporary field tent, Ronnie Shaw stood over a worktable surrounded by engineers.

Sico walked to her. She didn't look up right away—just gestured to a blueprint laid flat across the planks.

"New support grid," she said. "If we plate the worst fractures with steel and rerun the rebar through the mortared seams, we can buy time until the real stonework's done. I've got masons en route from Nordhagen. They're slow but good. With Sarah's shipment, we'll have the material."

Sico nodded. "She said it'll come either tomorrow or the day after."

Ronnie grunted in satisfaction. "Knew she wouldn't let us down."

She finally looked up at him, eyes tired but sharp.

"You should rest."

"I will," he lied.

"Don't bullshit me," she said. "You've been on your feet for eighteen hours."

He shrugged. "So have you."

"Yeah, and I'm old enough to get away with collapsing in the middle of a meeting."

He didn't smile, but his lips twitched.

Then Sico heard his name—faint, but familiar—carried on the salt-heavy wind that whistled through the Castle's ramparts.

"Sico!"

He turned, recognizing the voice even before he saw the figure jogging toward him.

Preston Garvey emerged from the deepening dusk, his coat flapping behind him, a rifle slung across his back and his ever-present tri-corner hat a little askew. His steps were lighter than earlier, less burdened by the weight of the day, and as he reached Sico, his grin came easy.

"There you are," Preston said, a little breathless but smiling all the same. "I've been looking for you."

Sico raised an eyebrow, brushing a bit of dust off his sleeve. "I've been here."

"I know," Preston said, catching his breath. "But still—felt right to come tell you this in person. Just heard from the kitchen. They're pulling out all the stops tonight."

Sico gave him a skeptical look. "Don't tell me Sturgis finally figured out how to make that powdered corn edible."

Preston laughed, full-bodied, the sound of it a welcome contrast to the quiet groan of the wounded and the rhythmic hammering of the builders.

"No, not corn mush," he said. "Full course seafood. Mirelurk meat. The cooks say they're going all-in—broiled tail, seared flank, some kind of spiced stew with the claws. Even got folks rendering down some of the glands for broth. There's talk of grilling the roe too."

Sico blinked, slowly processing that.

"A full course?" he repeated. "In a warzone?"

Preston's grin widened. "In a fortress that just survived a siege. People need more than bullets and walls to stay upright, Sico. They need something to feel human about."

That stopped him for a beat. The idea of a hot meal, one cooked not just for sustenance but for comfort, settled over him like a warm blanket. He looked past Preston to the inner courtyard, where smoke was beginning to rise from a makeshift grill assembled near the western barracks. Figures bustled around it—soldiers, workers, engineers—all drawn like moths to the promise of fire and food.

"You helped hold this place," Preston said, quieter now, his tone less jovial, more sincere. "So did I. So did everyone out there. I think we've earned a meal."

Sico exhaled through his nose. "We've also got wounded, exposed scaffolding, and a third of the wall still held together by sandbags and prayer."

"And we'll handle all that," Preston said, nodding. "Tomorrow. Just for tonight, let people remember why we're fighting for this place. Why the Castle matters."

He wasn't wrong. It had been a hellish twenty-four hours—blood, fire, acid, the deafening shriek of the Queen. Sico had ordered men into the breach, pulled two comrades from rubble himself, and stared down death more than once. The Castle still stood. That alone deserved something more than cold rations and another sleepless shift.

Ronnie, still nearby, didn't interject, but she gave a quiet, approving grunt from behind her blueprint.

"You should eat," she said without looking up. "You're no good to us dead on your feet."

Sico gave her a look that was half protest, half gratitude.

"Fine," he muttered. "But I swear, if I get food poisoning from undercooked claw meat, I'm blaming you both."

Preston chuckled and clapped him on the shoulder. "Fair enough."

They made their way down to the courtyard together, boots crunching over sand and broken shell fragments, passing lines of soldiers beginning to drift from their posts with a kind of cautious curiosity. The smell of roasting meat was growing stronger, heavier—greasy and rich, unmistakably Mirelurk, but not entirely unpleasant.

Near the mess area, someone had set up a rough string of lanterns—jury-rigged from old Minutemen signal lamps, their lenses still marked with blue stencils. The light they cast was soft and flickering, warm in the cool sea air.

Tables had been pushed together, barrels upended to serve as chairs. A line was forming already, and behind the mess counter, a trio of cooks in stained aprons moved with surprising precision. Huge steaming trays of cooked meat sat beneath tin covers. Steam rolled off them with every movement, carrying the smell into every corner of the yard.

"President," one of the cooks barked as Sico approached, wiping his hands on a threadbare towel. "Glad you made it. We saved you something special."

Sico gave him a skeptical look, but the cook—an older man with a long gray braid and the bearing of someone who'd worked a dozen camps before this—just grinned and gestured behind him.

He returned a moment later with a plate—actual ceramic, chipped but solid—laden with a variety of carefully arranged Mirelurk cuts. There was a thick slab of tail meat, glazed and seared with wild fennel and something vaguely garlicky; a stew of claws and root vegetables served in a hollowed gourd; and a handful of crisped roe pods, salted and smoked until they crunched like chips.

Sico stared at it.

Preston looked over his shoulder, impressed. "Damn. They're pulling all the stops."

"Didn't know we had fennel," Sico muttered.

"We didn't," the cook said cheerfully. "But Lucy from the farm down by the river says wild versions grow near the cliffs. She picked a bunch this morning. Wanted to make sure the meat didn't taste too much like the sea."

Sico glanced at the workers, the soldiers, the engineers gathering around the long tables. Conversations were starting again—quiet ones, with occasional bursts of laughter. He saw a father from the civil corps lifting a spoonful of stew to his kid's mouth. Saw a pair of Brotherhood defectors raising mugs in a quiet toast. Saw Ronnie, standing by the edge of the light, sipping something from a chipped enamel cup and watching it all unfold like it was some miracle she hadn't expected but deeply needed.

He took the plate, nodded once to the cook, and found a spot at one of the barrels. Preston joined him, his own plate already half empty.

For a while, they just ate.

The meat was rich, earthy, and far better than it had any right to be. The tail was tender and just spicy enough to cut through the gaminess. The stew warmed him from the inside out. The roe tasted like smoke and salt and something that almost, almost, resembled happiness.

Sico didn't speak until his plate was nearly clean.

"We should do this more," he said quietly.

Preston raised an eyebrow. "Mirelurk banquets?"

"Not just that," Sico said, shaking his head. "Moments like this. Letting people breathe. Reminding them that this"—he gestured at the food, the firelight, the gathering—"this is what we're defending. Not just walls and maps."

Preston nodded. "Yeah. I know what you mean."

The stars began to come out above them, faint at first but growing clearer with each minute, shimmering against the dark sky. Someone produced an old harmonica from their pocket and began playing a soft tune—slow, meandering, bluesy. The kind of music that lingered like smoke.

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• 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:-