Zeta Uprising The Zeta Uprising was the rioting and revolution of the human prisoners on the alien mothership " Zeta " in the year 2277 in the orbit of the planet Earth . It resulted in a complete human takeover of the ship and the destruction of a mothership sent in to destroy the " Zeta " after the human hijacking . Prelude . Recon craft Theta crash - landed in the wilderness north of Minefield . The aliens then set up a trap in the area , using the ship ' s distress signal to lure wastelanders into the crash site in order to be abducted for their experiments . The Lone Wanderer was one of these individuals . After the Lone Wanderer awakened , they were locked in a cell with another abductee named Somah . With a plan Somah drew up , she and the Lone Wanderer pretended to fight in order to spook the aliens and force them to enter the cell and break up the fight . They then attacked and killed the alien security and used their weapons to take over the detention wing . After meeting up with Sally , she helped the Lone Wanderer traverse the sectors of the ship , and assisted their path through the steamworks . Upon reaching the engineering core , the Lone Wanderer opened the cryo stasis chamber for Hartigan , a pre - War astronaut , in order to enlist his assistance in the uprising . His job was to traverse the ship ' s space walk and reach the bridge . However , he was dead upon exit . Therefore , the Lone Wanderer was responsible for traversing the space walk . Three other abductees , Elliott Tercorien , Paulson , and Toshiro Kago , were freed from stasis , and could have helped in the uprising . Battle . The space walk could not be traversed , due to the levitation beam to the bridge being shut off by the aliens . Therefore , three generators had to be destroyed in order to open the door to the decompression chamber . The Lone Wanderer fought through the cryo lab s , the robot assembly area , and the hangar , destroying each generator . The Lone Wanderer then put on the space suit and traveled the space walk , before reaching a levitation beam to the Observation deck On the observation deck , the alien captain appeared on a hologram , and gave the rebels an unintelligible and rather useless monologue . Just as the hologram dissipated , the ship ' s death ray fired a warning shot into space in order to scare the rebels into surrendering . The Lone Wanderer then battled the aliens in the Death Ray sectors and deactivated the death ray gun . A shot from the death ray could possibly have been fired at Earth . The only obstacle left was the bridge . At the bridge , the alien captain was killed , and immediately afterwards , a support mothership arrived to destroy the " Zeta " , since it had been hijacked by the human prisoners . By reactivating and using the ship ' s death ray , the support mothership was destroyed , and crash - landed . Aftermath . A beacon was accidentally somehow sent from the ship , and it landed in what was once the wreckage of recon craft Theta . It therefore allowed the Lone Wanderer free passage to and from the Capital Wasteland to " Zeta " . Sally remained on ship , however , depending on if they survived , Elliott Tercorien would have remained on ship and took care of the ship while its new captain , the Lone Wanderer , was absent . Toshiro Kago would also have stayed . Somah would have returned to the Capital Wasteland , and Paulson would have left for an unknown location on Earth . Appearances . The " Zeta " Uprising appears only in the " Fallout 3 " add - on " Mothership Zeta " .