The message echoed along the airways, reaching across the wasteland as far north as the Republic of Dave, and as far east as Girdershade. Three-Dog, for the second time in one week, spoke without his usual bluster. His voice lacked the style and panache which had made it so unique. It was instead heavy with dread and fear: "My friends, my listeners, my disciples, I have some bad news for those of us still fighting the good fight. Yesterday morning, project purity exploded. That's right my friends, the waters of life are flowing no more. Betta hitch up your belts, save what little you have, and hold on for dear life…"
Elder Owyn Lyons sat in the briefing room at the Citadel. Gathered at the tables around him were a collection of two dozen scientists, soldiers, and scribes. His daughter Sarah was on a chair in the corner of the room, watching the door through the corner of her eye, waiting for something. She had neglected to wear her Lyons' Pride power armour, instead opting for the lighter recon armour. She had been demoted not six days beforehand for leading a reckless attempt to rescue the Lone Wanderer from a band of raiders. The attempt had been successful, with few casualties. She had not said a word to her own father since. It had been necessary though; if Elder Owyn Lyons' own daughter would not follow his orders, then who would?
He leaned forward and addressed the emergency meeting, "This is what we know: yesterday at approximately eleven hundred hours, project purity exploded. We don't know why yet, or how extensive the damage is, but I can assure you that Scribe Rothchild is over there doing all he can to figure it out. So far we have twenty three casualties, fourteen wounded, the rest killed." His eyes traveled across the group, meeting the scared faces of each member. "We intend to solve this problem. The purifier will be fixed. In the meantime, however," he continued, "we have plenty of fresh water stores built up, and will be rationing these out to the settlements as much as we can afford." He glanced at Sarah. She was still staring at the door, waiting.
"How long, approximately, would these supplies last?" A Brotherhood knight named Artemis asked.
"Four months," Scribe Peabody told him, "According to my calculations, anyway. Eight, if we cut each settlement to half rations. That'll be about three barrels per every ten people, per month. If the purifier can be fixed at all, we can probably fix it within that time frame."
Noone said the question, but they could hear it all the same, And if we can't?
The door slammed open and a figure stood framed in the doorway. He had chin-length blonde hair done up in the blast back style, fixed in position by a red bandana. His chin was covered in dark five o'clock shadow.
Sarah Lyons nodded in satisfaction. The rest of the group immediately sat up straight and silent, no one willing to meet his eyes. The man stalked forward slowly, hefting a strange looking rifle. The barrel was constructed out of part of a steam gauge assembly, the stock, a crutch. Altogether it was a fearsome weapon. Every eye which wasn't resting on fingernails, paper, or the floor, had rested upon it.
"Does someone want to tell me what happened to my father's purifier?" the Wanderer asked, addressing the entire room, "Who dropped the ball?"
"It isn't your father's." a defiant voice replied. All eyes turned to Scribe Bigsley, whose head was heavily bandaged. The scribe glared at the Lone Wanderer, resolutely refusing to be cowed into silence, "He helped build it, but he was one of many. If it belongs to anyone now, it belongs to the Brotherhood of Steel."
The Wanderer raised his eyebrows.
Bigsley continued, voicing the feelings of quite a few members of the council, "We are the ones sacrificing blood and steel to keep it safe while you go gallivanting off to god knows where. What gives you the right to march in here waving some-" he gestured angrily at the MacGyvered steam gauge assembly, "-Some homemade monstrosity, and telling us off. You've got as much right to be in this room as any other wastelander!" he finished, crossing his arms.
The Wanderer raised the homemade monstrosity and fired it at Bigsley's left ear. The scribe ducked, narrowly avoiding the steel bolt which had embedded itself four inches into the wall, a web of cracks expanding outwards from the point of impact.
"It shoots railroad spikes." The Wanderer told him helpfully.
"I will not have weapons fired in this council room!" Lyons declared, rising to his feet, "If you do not put that away, I will have you forcibly removed from this Citadel!"
The Wanderer turned a cold look upon the Elder. The two of them had shared a less than friendly relationship since the Brotherhood had failed to contribute to his rescue.
"You can't afford to lose that many soldiers." The Wanderer replied icily, "Sit. Down."
They stared at each other, each trying to call the other's bluff.
"Jason," Sarah said gently. It was the first word she had spoken since the meeting had begun. It prompted distinct and, to Owyn Lyons at least, alarming changes in the Wanderer's features. His cold, emotionless face immediately softened. Aware that fact by itself had lost him the battle of wills; the Wanderer slung the weapon over his shoulder and turned to Sarah. The woman nodded discreetly at the door, and followed him out.
Inside the briefing room, twenty-four people allowed themselves to breathe again.
Sarah led him down the hall to the Lyons' Den; her squad's barracks.
"Get in." she ordered curtly. He obeyed and stood awkwardly in the center of the room.
Sarah walked up to him and smiled, "I think Bigsley pissed himself."
"Good." The Wanderer muttered with much satisfaction.
Sarah sighed. She put her arms around his shoulders and kissed him gently. The moment their lips met, she could almost feel his anger and helpless frustration being siphoned off. She smiled slightly; she hadn't realized how disarming a kiss could be.
She pulled away and embraced him, "Bigsley did have a point, you know."
"I know." Jason admitted. He started to pace back and forth across the length of the barracks, "But he still dropped the ball. The Purifier was his responsibility."
"Jason, we had our hands full before it started working." Sarah told him, taking a seat on her own bed, "Cut us some slack?"
"How much slack, exactly?" he asked, "My father's dream is a giant crater."
"No it isn't." she snapped, "Most of it is still there. I saw."
"Someone blew it up."
Sarah sighed, watching the man's face, "If it was sabotage, then I don't think it was one of us, Jason. Like it or not, we are all committed. How do you know it wasn't your father's work?"
He fixed her with a deadly glare. The same look usually reserved for his enemies, but she knew him better and stood her ground. She could also see, hidden behind the fierce look, fear, and a small amount of uncertainty. She pressed the point, "Your father spent probably close to forty years working on the purifier. Most of that time was wasted by incomplete results, experimental data no one could replicate, and failed attempts. And after all that, it was the enclave who eventually got it working-"
"You watch it!" the Wanderer warned her.
"Jason…" Sarah shook her head gently, "Your father gets the credit, and he deserves every bit of it. He did more for this wasteland than my own father did, and I wish more people would live by the example he set, but we both know the enclave were the ones who installed the G.E.C.K.. Who's to say they didn't put some kind of a failsafe in? Planted something in case they lost it…"
"It's been a year since we took the purifier…"
"And only nine months since you destroyed the landcrawler…" she shrugged, "Maybe the enclave finally decided it wasn't worth trying to save it…"
"But it was guarded!" Jason insisted, "They couldn't just send in someone to blow it up…"
"Why not?" Sarah asked, "We have both you and Gallows, and you two can sneak past damned near anything. Who's to say they don't have some spec. ops. soldiers of their own? If it was the Enclave at all, I mean. We don't know enough to make that call yet."
Jason stared at her, his anger fading, replaced with helplessness, "I need a target, Sarah. I can't just let this go."
"We don't know who did it." She told him, "Or what did it. Rothchild is over there right now trying to get some clues. If you want to be of use, go help him."
Scribe Rothchild stood in the ruins of Project Purity. He watched as knights, scribes, and volunteers from rivet city sorted out the wreckage. Piles were already forming; broken masonry, large chunks of metal, and other assorted parts of what used to be the purifier. A net was being dragged through the tidal basin, scooping up the wreckage which was floating on the surface.
Alex Dargon tapped him on the shoulder, "We found the source of the explosion."
Rothchild followed the scientist down into the bowels of the purifier. It had been gutted, with much of the basement, as well as the control room exposed to the outdoors. The control room itself was now devoid of windows; the air compression had caused all the glass in it to shatter. The electronics within had been rendered useless. The statue itself had sunk down into the basement and was lying within the run-off pools, in several pieces.
"The explosion occurred in the stage two purifier." Alex told him. The scientist had a bloodstained bandage wrapped around his left arm where a piece of shrapnel had caught him.
"Stage two?" Rothchild asked.
"The stage two purifier takes the toxic gasses and chemicals out of the water," the scientest explained, "which are usually left over by the removal of dirt and detritus from the stage one purifier. The simple fact is that most of the radiation in the water is caused by tiny particles of radioactive dust floating in it. The water itself is pure, but it's a heterogeneous mixture. The fact is that you can drink any water in the wasteland, but you have to let it sit for three days and then carefully scoop very thin layers on the top. That's how people in the wasteland have survived thus far. The water in the Potomac moves too much to allow for the particles to settle, which is why we need the purifier in the first place. It does more than remove the radioactive elements, though. It also removes the oxidized particles from all the sunken boats in the area. Then there're traces of methane and other noxious chemicals derived from the dumped tires, human refuse and other undesirables. Those get through the stage one purification process, and are weeded out in stage two. The machinery collects the gasses in a giant reservoir, which is right here..."
He stopped beside an enormous metal tank which had been blow wide open, the jagged bent metal edges a testament to the power of the explosion within it. The scribes around it had affixed makeshift masks over their mouths and noses. After a moment, Rothchild smelled why. He held his own sleeve over his nose.
Alex Dargon did the same and continued his explanation in a somewhat muffled voice, "When the pressure in the tank builds up to a certain point, the excess gas is piped off to the surface, where it's let off into the atmosphere."
"And how is it that the tank knows what the pressure is?" Rothchild asked.
"I was getting to that." Dargon told him, "We have a pressure regulator valve placed at the pipe exit. It's got a spring calibrated to exert a force equal to that just below the maximum pressure allowed in the tank. It's holding the door shut, so to speak. When the pressure builds up enough to counteract the force of the spring, the door opens and lets off the excess gasses."
"Why isn't all the gas released? Why is the tank there at all?"
"Doctor Howlett and Doctor Li both thought we might eventually use it to power an electrical generator." Dargon explained, "It would be much more difficult to shut down the generator and put the tank in later than it would be to simply place it in at the start."
"So why did the tank explode?"
"Simply? The spring in the pressure regulator had been torqued beyond the pressure limits of the tank. The tank burst first. Then all it took was a spark and…boom!"
Feet crunching on the wreckage made them look backwards. The Wanderer was walked towards them with a grim expression on his face. He didn't seem to take notice of the foul smell.
"I wondered when you would arrive." Rothchild said.
"What happened?" the Wanderer asked, looking from him to Dargon.
Alex groaned, "Please don't make me repeat all that. I just finished explaining it to Rothchild."
"I won't." the Wanderer promised, "Just tell me, was it sabotage?"
"Yes." Said Dargon.
The Wanderer looked to Rothchild, who sighed, "It certainly looks that way."
"Any ideas on who did it?" the Wanderer asked.
"Someone with an extremely intimate knowledge of how this purifier works." Alex said, staring hard into the middle distance, "You'll be wanting to look for someone who is normally around the purifier all the time, but was probably absent during the explosion…"
The Wanderer nodded, filing the tip away for further use, "can it be rebuilt?"
Alex sighed, "the tank is busted, but as Rothchild pointed out, we don't really need it. The electronics are going to be hard to replace, but if I could, I could reprogram it."
"Doctor Li did leave a full set of schematics before she left." Rothchild supplied
"Try Vault 112." The Wanderer prompted, "There's plenty of unused equipment in there. It's under a garage just west of Evergreen Mills."
"Will do, thanks for the tip." Alex's voice was distant. Rothchild knew the expression, had worn it himself many times. It was the expression of a man in full creative swing, his mind ablaze with possibilities and scenarios for the future.
"You know…" the scientist murmured, "Maybe this wasn't such a bad thing…I mean the original purifier was a boondoggle. A mess slapped together out of a hundred different parts from a hundred different places. Nine times out of ten, the parts were incompatible. Maybe now is a chance to redesign it. Cut the fat and improve the input/output ratio. I mean we know how it works now, right? All the parts can be replaced I'm sure…" His face fell suddenly as a thought struck all three of them:
"Was the G.E.C.K. damaged?" the Wanderer asked.
"Destroyed." Rothchild murmured. "It was under the control center."
Jason glanced up at the massive hole in the ceiling. The underside of some of the catwalk was just visible beyond a tangle of twisted rebar. The Wanderer stared up at it, "I'll check around. There has to be another one somewhere in the world…"
"Jason," Rothchild said, catching his attention. Rothchild knew the Wanderer's name, but usually didn't use it.
The Wanderer looked back down at him.
"Your job," said Rothchild, "is to find out who did this, and insure that it doesn't happen again. Let the Brotherhood handle fixing the purifier."
"And the G.E.C.K.?"
"That as well." Rothchild told him seriously, "We have to make sure that this doesn't happen again. We'll get a new G.E.C.K.. You…do what you do best."
This is going to be a more regular adventure, so please don't expect as much in-depth analysis of the characters. Modus Operandi set the board, now we get to have fun moving the pieces around.