"...work. Please work. Please work. Yes!"

Ryleigh sounded relieved as she tapped at the Pip-Boy screen. A young girl's voice sounded annoyed behind her.

"We really don't have a lot of time."

Ryleigh turned slightly, clicking her ranger armor into place. She sounded tense but was forcing fake cheer into her words.

"Hey, we are on a fucking spaceship. I am recording everything I can. And since Somah has dubbed herself as the 'watch our backs' sort of help, that means I get to go first so you can wait a few minutes while I get all my loot."

Sally huffed and spun around on the metal floor. She sounded truly chipper as she walked away.

"Fine. While you do that I'll get the door."

Ryleigh checked her guns and whispered after the little girl, her voice raising an octave as a metal grate was pulled away from the wall.

"Wait, Sally. Sally!"

There is a soft thunk as Sally crawled through the vent. Ryleigh walked over towards the noise and waited. The door wooshed open. Sally's triumphant voice was still muffled and echoed slightly from the vent.

"See! I told you I can help."

Ryleigh sighed with mild amusement and started walking.

"I will never doubt you again. Now how do we get to the engineering core?"

"I can lead you! I'll stay in here to get all the doors, so you keep an eye out for any aliens."

They both started walking down the hallways. Occasionally Sally would whisper to stop and Ryleigh would press herself against the wall as multiple people walked past. Doors slid open and closed as Ryleigh snuck past babbling aliens. Suddenly an alien shouted something behind Ryleigh and she spun around, her knee hitting the floor as she drew her pistol and fired.

"Sally, get the door!."

"I'm working on it, hold on!"

Ryleigh grunted in pain as an impact sizzled against her shoulder. A door opened behind her and she pushed herself back and out of the doorway. The door slammed shut and while Ryleigh kept moving.

"Sorry about that. I didn't see them until they had already turned the corner."

Sally sounded very upset and Ryleigh muttered a swear under her breath.

"It's fine, Sally. We just need to keep moving, ok?"

Minutes ticked past as the pair continued sneaking through the ship. A large set of doors opened and the Pip-Boy picked up the thrum of a massive engine. Sally kicked out another grate and climbed from the vent. She was clearly pleased with herself.

"Yes! I knew we could make it. I'll get Somah."

Ryliegh leaned heavily against the wall. She rubbed her face, her voice tense.

"I don't think she'll fit through the vents. Serves her right for not keeping up."

Sally reprimanded from the other side of the large room.

"That's not very nice. And we can just use the teleporter!"

There was a pause. Ryleigh pushed away from the wall with an annoyed shout.

"Are you fucking kidding me? A teleporter?"

"We couldn't turn it on in the other part of the ship. But now I should be able to run through and get her! Be right back."

The room buzzed and Ryleigh started swearing as she walked over to a separate doorway. This one opened on its own with a hiss. She shivered from a sudden temperature change and cautiously walked into the room.

"Holy fuck."

Ryeligh tapped a finger against glass. She stepped around to the left and pressed a few buttons. Aliens babbling started playing from a nearby speaker. A man with a thick accent began shouting.

"Where's my wife? Where's my boy? What have you done with them? When I get free, so help me God I'm going to kill every last one of you!"

Aliens babbled again and there was a meaty thunk followed by an electric shock. The man yelled in pain and anger.

"Arrgh! What are you doing? What the hell do you want with us? LET ME GO!"

The recording clicked off as a buzz echoed from the other room. Two sets of footsteps walked into the room behind Ryleigh and stopped. A woman's voice voiced the same shock as Ryleigh's.

"Oh damn! Look at these people!"

Sally walked up next to Ryleigh.

"I've seen these all over. They put people in them, and the people go to sleep. They stay asleep for a really long time, too. Be careful if you touch them, though. They're really cold."

Ryleigh walked to another station and tapped the glass again.

"Who are they?"

Sally made a small unsure noise.

"I don't know. I've never talked to them. Sometimes I'd come and look at them, and wonder why they're dressed like that. You see that one guy? He has this really neat suit on... like armor or something! And that other guy? He looks just like a cowboy! I saw pictures of cowboys in books. I never saw a real one, though."

She continued talking excitedly. Shoma had walked over to a different pod and pressed a button. Another recording clicked on as a man began questioning his captors in Japanese. He was also beaten as the recording ended. Sally had gone quiet when the recording started and skipped over to where Ryleigh was standing.

"I never had the courage to wake them up, but I think you're going to need to. The spaceman has a suit, and we need him to use it."

Ryleigh took a small step back and turned to the little girl.

"Why do we need a 'spaceman' to help us?"

Sally's eye roll was audible.

"Well, because he's got a spacesuit! Can't go out in space without one. And if we're going to escape, we need to go outside. If they turned off the elevator things, that's the only other way to go. So we need a suit. See? Simple!"

Silence. Finally Ryleigh gave a tired sigh and walked back to the front of the room.

"Okay, let's talk to the astronaut."

Ryleigh pressed a button and there was a hiss as the pods opened. Men groaned as they stumbled forward coughing and questioning.

"Where are they? Where are the little buggers?"

The same voice from the first recording shouted angrily, pulling a pistol and cocking back the hammers. Another voice was shaken and scared as the man stumbled back away from everyone.

"What's... what's going on? Who are all these people?"

Someone shouted at them in japanese as a sword was drawn from its sheath at the other side of the room. Ryleigh stepped forward, raising her voice to be heard.

"Whoa! Hold on! We are prisoners too. I don't know what you guys remember but we are on an alien spaceship. They abducted us and experimented on us and you guys were all frozen for some reason. Aw shit."

Ryleigh walked across the room and lifted something heavy. Sally was at her elbow with a sad whisper.

"Poor Mr. Astronaut. You should probably take his suit though. We're gonna need it."

"Yeah. Right."

Ryleigh dragged the body away from the others. Fabric rustled as she took off the space suit. Shoma and Sally continued talking to the people recently revived. The angry cowboy was Paulson. The scared voice belonged to a medic who fought at Anchorage named Elliott. It took a few tries but eventually it was decided the Japanese man answered to Toshiro. Ryleigh bundled the suit up and walked back to the others.

"Sally, what's our next move?"

"We need to turn off the generators. That will cut power to a lot of the ship and you should be able to then go through the decompression chamber to the outside of the ship and get the big teleporter working. There's one in the Cryo Lab, one in the Hangar Bay and one where they make the robots... the Robot Assembly area."

Sally spoke with more confidence than any of the adults. Ryleigh set the space suit down on a table and checked her ammo.

"Ok, let's find those generators. We move quick and quiet. No doubt they know we are out but we don't need to give them hints as to where we are. We'll all meet back here once we are done with a generator. Sounds good?"

Their agreements came in a variety of degrees of enthusiasm.

*Click*

*Click*

The Pip-Boy slammed against a metal panel as an explosion rocked the ship. Sirens were blaring as exhaust hissed from busted pipes above them. Gunfire ricochets from behind Ryleigh as plasma fire from the alien guns pepper the area. The loud crack of a revolver fires back while a sword cuts through surprised aliens. Toshiro is shouting aggressively in Japanese and Paulson is joining him at the back of the room.

"Come on you alien sons-of-bitches!"

Elliott called from the front of the ship as Ryeligh struggled back to her feet.

"I think I'm actually getting the hang of this thing. It should be jamming their teleporters."

Ryleigh shouted back as she fired a few shots.

"Then why are there more aliens coming through the teleporter?"

Any response was lost as another blast shook the ship again. Somah shouted from off to the left.

"This ship's half dead and if that death ray isn't online soon we're dead right along with it!"

Sally sounded far too cheerful as she screamed over the noise.

"This is like playing a holo-game, only better! Try hitting some buttons, one of them has to do something!"

Ryleigh swore loudly and began slamming her hand against buttons and pulling levers. Paulson yelled in pain and stumbled backward.

"Soldier boy, I could use one of those stimpaks if you don't mind!"

Toshiro laughed maniacally as he moved forward to pick up the slack, his sword singing as it swung through the air. Elliott shouted back at the cowboy with fear in his voice.

"A little busy right now!"

Somah was also shouting at the panel in front of her.

"I push this, it doesn't do anything, I push THAT, it doesn't... oh hey that did something!"

There was a quick, high pitched beeping and a thrum of something powering up. Sally laughed excitedly.

"Things are flashing again! We got flashing things! You must be doing something right. Keep it up!"

"Come on come on come on…"

Ryleigh whispered as she stared at the panel in front of her. The beeping continued to get higher and suddenly buzzed. She slammed her fist on a button and there was the roar of a cannon. Elliott and Sally began to cheer loudly as Somah and Ryleigh turned and ran to the back of the room and opened fire on the remaining aliens. Finally everything was quiet except for heavy breathing, exhausted laughing, and Sally clapping excitedly.

"Yay! We won! I knew we could do it, I knew we could beat them!"

Ryleigh laughed and took a few steps back to the center of the room.

"This has been a hell of a ride, hasn't it?"

Paulson's voice held none of the congratulatory joy as the others. He huffed a humourless laugh and finished reloading his gun.

"No offense, but this ain't some sort of game. My whole life is over. Gone, a long time ago. Sorry if I can't make light of the situation like you can."

He turned and walked to the other side of the room. Ryleigh shifted her weight uncomfortably, turning to give him space. Toshiro walked over and clapped a hand on her shoulder. His armor chinked silently and he said something in a grateful tone. Ryleigh returned the gesture.

"Take care of yourself."

Ryleigh turned and walked over to Sally who was still jumping in little circles cheering.

"You're even better than Captain Cosmos!"

Ryleigh chuckled. The happiness that was momentarily dampened by Paulson was back.

"Hey, thanks for your help. I couldn't have done it without you."

Sally hopped into a chair. She sounded smug as ever.

"I know and you're welcome!"

Ryleigh scratched the back of her neck as she pondered how to ask her question.

"So what will you do now? Is there anyone back on earth you can go live with?"

Sally's voice fell for only a moment.

"No… but that's fine. I think I'm going to stay here for a while. I don't think I'd like it much down there anymore, and there's still a bunch of the ship I haven't seen. Elliott was saying he may stick around too so I won't be lonely. I think he feels bad the earth got bombed and everything. And what the aliens did to his team."

The little girl suddenly squealed with excitement.

"Hey, guess what? You can go home! I was looking at the controls on the bridge here, and most of it doesn't make any sense to me because it's in that weird alien language. But there's this one thing I saw, and I think maybe I accidentally pushed a button while we were fighting that big ship. And I think maybe the button I pushed sent some kind of a thing back down to earth. It was a small thing standing on one of the teleporters so it wasn't really my fault. But this is a good thing! I think now you can use the teleporter in the Captain's quarters to get back to earth. Pretty great, isn't it?

Ryleigh bent and gave the girl a tight hug. Sally squeaked at the embrace.

"That's great, Sally. Thank you. And take care of yourself up here."

Sally giggled as she pulled away.

"Will do, Captain! Bye! Come back and visit!"

Ryleigh walked over to a door and opened it. There was a faint buzzing in the background as the teleporter sat waiting.

"Thanks for your help. Couldn't have done it without you."

Somah must have been standing by the teleporter and she laughed.

"That's right! If it weren't for me, you'd be sitting in a holding cell or lying on some crazy operating table right now. You owe me big time, kid. Hey, what's up?"

The hint of concern in Somah's question revealed the worry on Ryleigh's face.

"The door won't open."

Somah's voice was matter of fact as she tapped against the metal.

"Probably means the rest of the ship is so badly damaged that it decompressed. My guess is you don't want to open that door."

Ryleigh gave a sad grunt. Her voice was quiet.

"I was hoping to search for someone that was with me. A dog. They had healthy brahmin in some of those cells so I was hoping they might have kept her alive too…"

There was a pause before Somah responded.

"That's rough, kid."

Ryleigh took a deep breath before turning and walking closer to the teleporter.

"What will you do now?"

Somah walked over with her and did not comment on the change of subject. She had a sly smile in her voice.

"I'm gonna see about getting off this thing. Head back to the Wasteland with some new toys, maybe carve out a place for myself. Literally, if I have to. Odds are we won't be bumping into each other again, so I just wanted to say thanks."

The two were silent for a moment as they stood in front of the teleporter. Ryleigh attempted to sound confident.

"Sally says she got it working."

"Like the ones in that lab that made the brahmin explode?"

Ryleigh hummed at Somah's question and clucked her tongue. They continued to stand there for a moment before Somah clapped Ryleigh on the back.

"Good luck!"

Ryleigh gave a cynical chuckle and stepped forward. The buzzing grew louder until the sound popped. Her nauseous groan mixed with the sound of wind blowing across the Pip-Boy. Something ran up and began licking at her face. Ryleigh gasped in surprise and forced herself into a sitting position.

"Abbey! You smart girl! How the hell did you stay hidden up there?"

Abbey barked happily. They both grew quiet, Ryleigh shifting on the ground as she looked around. Abbey started to whine nervously as Ryleigh got to her feet.

"Where the fuck are we?"

*Click*


The story will continue in Part 2: A Fallout Journal - New Vegas! Thanks for reading!