Brotherhood-Calculator War

The Brotherhood-Calculator War was a military conflict between the Midwestern Brotherhood of Steel and the Calculator's army in 2198.

Background
The war with the Calculator was the result of budget cuts and the resulting inflexible automaton being installed in place of a proper artificial intelligence at the heart of Vault 0. Designed to make the surface habitable for humanity once again, the Calculator was unable to recognize humanity's survival or reinterpret its directives: When Gammorin's forces breached the Vault's entrance during a recon mission, it concluded that all of the survivors on the surface are mutants and began sterilization procedures: Complete genocide of humanity, for the sake of that present in the cryonic suspension chambers within the Vault (all of whom suffered severe brain damage in the process of waking up).

Facing the Calculator
The Brotherhood pushed further west, intent on confronting the robotic menace that terrified the raiders and Gammorin's Army so. The highest concentration of robots was located in Colorado Springs, where the fabled Vault 0 was supposed to lie. More information was needed. After establishing a surface base at Bunker Delta, the Brotherhood's forces moved on Junction City, to investigate reports of a victory over one of the Calculator's robots. Given that Junction City was a staunchly independent settlement that rejected Brotherhood offers of protection and lacked any heavy weapons, this fact intrigued the order. The Brotherhood also wanted to intercept the Reaver Movement, which set its sights on acquiring the devices. Upon recovering the parts, the Brotherhood learned that the robot was already severely damaged by the time it entered the settlement and exploded due to its power source overloading.

Information recovered from the robot and recon efforts by the rebuilt intelligence wing of the Brotherhood allowed it to track down the source of the robot. It was tracked to the pre-War center of industry known as Great Bend. The ruined city was identified as a potential robot manufacturing plant, in the process of being established. A squad was dispatched under the Warrior's lead to destroy the area and any robots they found. The squad managed to infiltrate the city and remove the robot presence. Thanks to the fact that the command robot (a pacification bot) was damaged, the artificial terrors could only offer limited resistance. Brotherhood squads Smear and Falcon booby trapped the area to deny the robots a potential manufacturing plant.

However, the Brotherhood's offensive was slowed by treason. The Warrior's squad that formed the spearhead of the offensive was recalled from the frontlines to deal with a domestic issue: A group of Quincy inhabitants under Guldo Sciavo's leadership managed to steal equipment, a Brotherhood vehicle, and several suits of power armor from a Brotherhood weapons depot at Quincy, after poisoning the guards. The Elders judged them guilty of high treason and sentenced them to death in absentia. The Warrior was sent to carry out the verdict. After navigating the independent town, the squad managed to destroy the Red Stingers and their leader. The Brotherhood leaders ordered the bodies of the gang members to be crucified outside Quincy, along with the guards that were supposed to have stood watch. Furthermore, friends and known family members of the Red Stingers were rounded up in an internment camp for interrogation and to suppress any rumors that may spread.

In the Warrior's absence, events took a strange turn. The Reaver Movement contacted the Brotherhood with a desperate plea for help. Their war against the Calculator was going poorly, with the only remaining stronghold in Newton under constant assault by the robots. While the Brotherhood would normally allow the robots to wipe out the Reavers, the Movement offered to trade their knowledge of pre-War Yuma Flats Energy Consortium designs, in exchange for the rescue of the main Reaver leaders from Newton. The Warrior's squad was deployed on a search and rescue mission. The mission succeeded and the Reaver officials were moved to Brotherhood bases under armed escort, while the surviving members of the Movement were placed in internment camps for interrogation. The Elders eventually allowed them to join the Brotherhood. However, the deployment also highlighted a troubling development: The robots started taking prisoners.

Man against Machine
The war with the Calculator entered its final phase with the establishment of Bunker Epsilon. The Warrior and his squad became an integral point of the Brotherhood's strategy. Outmatched severely by the Calculator, the Brotherhood had to carefully plan and structure their attacks to weaken the robotic menace first. The first operation carried out in the new territory was directed at a robot repair station in Canyon City, to destroy a vital piece of the infrastructure. The assault was combined with attacks by Dagger and Tusk squads on smaller repair stations in the area. The success severely reduced the Calculator's ability to project power in that part of the region. The Brotherhood immediately formulated further attack plans, to exploit this opportunity, even as the revelation that the Calculator was an automaton, not artificial intelligence, spread among the command corps.

The next attack focused on a newly discovered nuclear power plant supplying the robotic army with power. As the Brotherhood was far too successful in its war against the robots to be ignored, the assignment given to the Warrior was simple: Search and destroy. The success of the mission was tremendous. With their power supply cut, the Calculator was only able to leverage Vault 0's own power source for robot manufacturing, slowing its war machine down, while the destruction of the facility's manufacturing facilities scattered its plans. However, the Brotherhood also realized that the ultimate goal of the machine was nothing less than total genocide, the removal of any humans deviating from its programmed definition of one. Worse, as it was not an AI, but simply a machine that ticked off its programmed priorities, reasoning with it was impossible. The Brotherhood was the only thing standing in its way, a small group completely unsuited for a total war with an enemy seemingly without number.

The final assault on Vault 0 and Cheyenne Mountain was delayed to deal with a critical security risk. As the Brotherhood was unable to match the Calculator and his robots in the field, it relied on hit-and-run tactics to retain initiative without sacrificing men or revealing its bases. However, Bartholomew Kerr, a merchant in good standing with the Brotherhood who sold his wares at the organization's primary bunkers, was captured by robots and taken to Scott City. His knowledge of Brotherhood bases and their populations could prove the death of the Brotherhood. The Warrior was dispatched with a grim mission, to neutralize him. The mission was a success, though it left the Brotherhood traumatized. Scott City was the local "interrogation" base. Captives were tortured for information and then their brains were removed for further information retrieval. Apart from a mass grave containing over 300 dead bodies, the Brotherhood located the body of General Barnaky, tortured and lobotomized just hours before the Brotherhood squads hit the city. The potential of the Calculator accessing his knowledge forced the Brotherhood's hand.

The Brotherhood resorted to a desperate, bold plan: A direct attack on Cheyenne Mountain, with the Warrior leading the charge and Dagger squad providing backup. Vault 0 was breached with the Kansas City warhead detonated at point blank range, right in front of the Vault's massive blast door. The squads pushed deep into the Vault, to find and destroy the Calculator. As the squads pushed into the Vault, the Calculator mounted the offensive that the Brotherhood feared. A spearhead of six Behemoth-class robots supported by a large number of pacification robots were committed to the assault on Bunker Epsilon, with hundreds of other robots simultaneously engaging survivor communities along the front. The Warrior was facing victory or extinction. Penetrating the lower levels of the Vault, the Brotherhood squad met the transformed General Barnaky, now bound to the sterile shell of a combat brainbot. After successfully dealing with the once-great General, the squad confronted the Calculator and managed to destroy the brains that formed the organic part of its computational matrix, corrupting 85% of the main protocol programming. Calculator: "Greetings. I am the Calculator, overseer of the Vault Network. You have proven to be a statistical anomaly that crashed my logistics programs time and time again. It is my admiration of your adaptation and ingenuity that brings you to me. I assume that you would agree that ten Behemoth robots would terminate you and your squad? I have the resources to make such an offensive, but it is not in my interest. After all, you are quite the remarkable human and, more importantly, you have something I need. It is the organic portion of my mainframe that has become corrupted. The degeneration of my symbiotic brains has corrupted eighty-five percent of main protocol programming. It would take only one brain to bring my organic subsystems back online, but finding a feasible brain has become a problem. I would use a brain from one of Vault 0's residents, but I compute that my CPU would only become less efficient. However there is another solution. Yours is a brain can bring balance to my organic neuro-network. I am offering you what you humans call a "dream come true." ''You can shed your mortal shell and join with me. You will share my power and resources to save humanity and restore civilization from the smoking ruins of the wasteland.'' Your name will never be forgotten and be synonymous with the word "hero." What say you, warrior? Will you continue to fight me? Destroy me and continue to carve some small, insignificant niche for the Brotherhood? While the Brotherhood may tame a region, they will never have the lasting impact I alone can. The machinery you see before you has the capacity to remove your brain from its mortal vessel. It is in this machine that your journey to save mankind will truly begin. ''You must hurry, human. My systems cannot function long without a symbiotic brain."'' (MIS 26 Speech.txt)

The Calculator pleaded with the Warrior to sacrifice themselves and help stabilize the network, in exchange for becoming the leader of the robotic army, but the Warrior refused and destroyed the machine, disabling the entire robotic army in mid-step, preventing the second holocaust of humanity. After the smoke cleared, the Brotherhood devoted time to rebuilding its massive losses. The ruined Vault 0 was claimed as its main base of operations, while the remaining forces rallied. The weak Brotherhood found itself at odds with opportunistic raiders, fighting a guerrilla war against the military order and its realm. The Brotherhood suffers major setbacks, losing outposts and men as it consolidates its power base. Eventually, it manages to prevail and form close bonds with the peoples under its protection, creating a new regime under the command the Warrior, now a General of the Brotherhood. Humanity began to prosper under their care and leadership. Fallout Tactics endings: "When the acrid smoke clearsm nothing remains of the entity known as the Calculator except burnt wires and broken valves. It is a decisive victory for humanity, for at a crucial point in the raging battle the robots were stopped dead in their course of destruction. The Warrior can only ponder on the lost opportunity that the destruction of such a technological marvel represents. History has shown that even the victors of battle have some regrets, but sometimes one must move forward. The Brotherhood is quick to establish Vault 0 as its main base of operations. Although much destruction was wrought here it still represents a massive store house of knowledge and technology. The ancient structure becomes the central hub of operations, coordinating between outposts far and near and reinforcing their supply lines and transport routes across the countryside, ironically mimicking the original purpose of their defeated enemy. ''Recruitment and education of the local tribal and village populations becomes the all-important mission of the depleted and wounded Brotherhood, but the education is not once sided. After generations of surviving in the harshness of the wastelands the indigenous people are in tune with the land. They have valuable lessons to teach those immersed solely with technology, lessons of nature and balance that the Brotherhood had previously neglected. Not all of the wasteland's inhabitants are sharing the same noble purpose: opportunistic raiders and bandits enjoy the fruits of a recovering war torn Brotherhood. Patrols are scarce and in smaller numbers than the thieves remember encountering in the past, as the Brotherhood focuses on consolidating its power base. Several frontier outposts are lost as the Brotherhood finds they are fighting a guerrilla war without the support of large numbers, but adversity and hardship are as familiar to the Brotherhood as discipline and knowledge and they learn their lessons quickly. With a new power over this region comes a new responsibility. All plans for re-establishing contact with the west are postponed indefinitely.'' ''Recruitment begins anew and the initiate ranks swell. All military efforts are then concentrated on uprooting all outlaw predators in the region, finally making it safe for the Brotherhood and its allies. In time the Brotherhood once again rules the land. Resources are then allocated to expansion and development. Technology becomes more widespread; with irrigation systems established to make the nuclear blasted land fertile, humanity once again starts to prosper. The Hero, the warrior of the Brotherhood, now a general, shares the burden and the satisfaction of overseeing civilization's development. The Brotherhood of Steel has come through the trials of this region and emerged scarred but wiser. It will be decades before a reunion is possible between the old Brotherhood and the new Brotherhood regime. In that time there are new alliances to be made, new battles to be fought, new victories to be had, but that is a tale for another day."''

The new regime didn't survive the test of time. As of 2277, the Brotherhood was reduced to a small detachment in Chicago, considered as gone rogue and off the radar of the Brotherhood.

Outcome

 * See Fallout Tactics endings.

Appearances
The Brotherhood-Calculator War appears in Fallout Tactics.