CHAPTER TWELVE: THE GLOWING SEA
[18 Months since the Malfunction on P4M-523]
Sam stood with Jack beside her, both of them in their new X-01 Power Armour, freshly stamped with the Brotherhood insignia on the chest, as she held onto the inner frame of the Vertibird and watched as Captain Kellis waved them off. Excitement bubbled inside of her. They were really going to do this. The Vertibird would get them as close as it could since the pilot was in a standard issue radiation suit. After that it was up to them. It was too big a risk to take the Vertibird with them because it couldn't fly in the severe electromagnetic radiation that had built up in the atmosphere above the Crater of Atom. There was also the added risk of technology like that falling into the hands of whatever they'd find out there in the 'hot zone' as Jack was calling it.
"You nervous?" Jack asked through his face mask, his electronically modified voice still noticeably his. She took in a slow breath to calm the nerves he'd noticed. "We're about to go into an area that makes Chernobyl look like a pleasant summer vacation spot … Yes, I'm terrified." she replied.
"See now you're only scared because you understand shit like that. I am happily ignorant of what I'm flying into and I'd like to keep it that way." Jack pointed out and she rolled her eyes, annoyed that he couldn't see the gesture. "These suits really are excellent though." he acknowledged, flexing his arms, and moving the joists. "Man! So light compared to those walking tanks. I feel like the response time in these babies is off the charts." he added giving his hips a twist.
"Improved by a factor of five, best guess." Sam supplied, "Of course the new haptic sensors I installed and enhanced will have helped as they pick up even the smallest muscle fibre twitch in your legs and arms. They respond more naturally to your movements, even predicting them. It's a shame that Ingram is bonded to her current exoskeleton. I'd love to have tried to improve hers with these upgrades but the shock to her system from taking her out of the other one might just kill her."
"Yep, like I said. Excellent." he replied and she got the distinct feeling he had stopped listening as soon as she'd mentioned 'haptics'. Jack leant over towards the pilot as they neared their destination, approximately twenty minutes in. "Don't be a hero now Jenks. Just get as close as you can and bug out. We'll call you back for a lift in a few days." he warned the soldier, who Sam was only just realising must have been a member of his squad. She recalled that designation from the mission to Fort Strong – he was the nimble quick thinker that had used the jet pack to land on the Sentry Bot but other than that she didn't know him or even what he looked like outside of a suit or faceplate, which was an odd feeling. Once they were back she promised herself she would make a concerted effort to get to know the men and women that would have her husband's back out there.
"Understood Commander." Knight Jenks responded sounding older than she'd imagined and manoeuvred them as Sam stared out over the uninviting sight, watching as the atmosphere shifted and their progress slowed. Jack joined her and they both looked out at the scorched air, dancing with electricity and setting an eerie red and green gloom over the entire cracked Earth beneath it.
"Okay … I take it back. Now I'm nervous. I don't need to understand everything to know 'that' right there, is bad news." Jack muttered sharing her view. "That's close enough!" he declared to his pilot. "Put us down here. Elder Maxson would not be happy if we crashed his Vertibird on this little field trip!" As if tempting fate, they were suddenly forced to cling on as the updraft kicked up radioactive dirt and the sensors screamed, beeping wildly as the engines struggled against the crap in the air and the metal itself began to warp. When she got back she'd add radiation shielding to her 'to do list' on the Vertibirds. They dropped to about ten feet above ground level and Jack decided that was close enough. "Out, out, out!" he barked at her and as one they jumped. The impact set her teeth on edge as she hit the ground hard but she felt nothing else as the suit's shock absorbers took the strain. She turned instantly, looking up to see the Vertibird making a hasty retreat back up into the clearer air.
She shared a look with Jack, seeing only the oppressive metal mask as he met her gaze. "So that's that then. We're alone out here." he intoned through the metallic voice plate. She didn't want to admit he sounded as uneasy as she felt about that even with the suits distortion. She was quite happy for Jack to live in blissful ignorance too. His confidence had always made her feel braver.
"Looks like." Sam replied wondering if this would be another miscalculation on her part, to come out alone without a team to support them, but then what if they found something? She didn't want to be responsible for having to ask Jack to execute his new squad because they'd overheard or seen something they couldn't afford them too. The Minutemen might have eventually come to accept she and Jack as 'aliens' but she had no doubt that the Brotherhood would shoot them before they could so much as explain. Dropping her gaze to the PipBoy she checked the readouts.
"As expected, any video telemetry and radio communication are going to be impossible inside the Glowing Sea. The electromagnetic interference is too high." she voiced. Which also meant no video for Maxson to watch through their helmet cams and see what they were actually up to out here. She tapped the cam just to illustrate the point to Jack and gave him a pained smile – it was sort of good news and what she'd planned for but it was good to have it confirmed rather than needing to arrange for a little 'accident' with them.
"I got it Sam. No one can hear us scream out here. Just like in space which is funny cause I kind of feel like an astronaut in this suit." He turned and gave a bit of a hop and a jump, defying gravity with the powerful servos launching him into the air. Sam glared at him.
"Seriously, why did I marry you?" she muttered through her metallic voice mod which made it sound more harsh than the fond exasperation she'd actually gone for as she followed after him stepping normally. "Will you stop that!" she barked when he did it again. "The cores are going to drain faster out here with the shielding having to work double time. And the lack of direct sunlight through that radiation storm is going to render the photovoltaic plating useless, so we can't recharge that way. We need to conserve power." she chastised as Jack stopped and eyed the dark green tinted sky above them. If there was ever an apocalyptic sky cover, she imagined the electricity laced radiation-soaked clouds above were it. She'd like to say they glowed – but they didn't, it was more like they seemed bloated and diseased, ready to spew down bile on them at the first provocation. She thought it was probably the most depressing thing she'd ever seen. The ultimate act of man against nature, to poison the very air they needed to breathe and blot out the sun.
"Yeah that views a buzz kill. And I'd thought the dark side of the moon was bleak…" He muttered sounding about as pleased as she was to be taking a stroll right now in it, as he waited for her to catch up in her stomping gate. She scanned the surrounding area with her gun, looking down the infrared scope and seeing just a haze of red.
"Infrared is useless out here too. Everything's glowing. We'll have to use the basic iron sights." She added.
"And the news just keeps getting better." Jack sighed. They strode across the cracked Earth shoulder to shoulder, her scanning left, and Jack right.
Their first encounter with what might await them out here was a shot of adrenalin that Sam hadn't needed, as she leapt over the head of a Radscorpion that had burrowed out from beneath her damn feet. Only it wasn't alone; it must have been some sort of nest they'd stepped in and the swarm was pissed about it. These things weren't like the ones they'd had in Sanctuary or even at the Castle. These were big, burnt red in colour and seriously pissed off. Their armour had to be the thickest she'd ever seen. Her armour piercing bullets chugged into one and she stood her ground, focusing her attacks as she felt Jack behind her doing the same as they were encircled. It took several grenades, and a lot more bullets than she wanted to expend, to take down the five arachnids. She stood panting, her ears ringing as she examined the dings to the leg of her Power Armour that one had gotten it's enormous pincers around; she'd felt the strain as it tried to crush the limb.
"You okay?" Jack asked, his metal gloved hand going to the leg plating, checking that the seals hadn't been damaged. A puncture out here would let in the deadly radiation and she'd be dead, rather unpleasantly, or just wish she was… in a matter of hours. She checked the readouts.
"It's fine. All green. Just the shock I think. Wasn't expecting to run into wildlife like that out here." she admitted still trying to get her wildly beating heart back under control, as she concentrated on regulating her breathing and conserving oxygen.
Jack nodded and patted her plated shoulder. "Alright then, but we gotta go. Just in case something else tries to take a crack at us, we did just made a hell of a ruckus." He admitted, his head swivelling nervously.
Jack was right of course and something else did come a knocking. Repeatedly. Against all odds, life had found a way to survive out here, with these creatures seemingly thriving in the radioactive conditions, far beyond anything Sam had known was possible. Not even in the depths of space had she ever seen creatures so well adapted. Clearly whatever tinkering that food paste had done to the genetics on this planet when it entered the food chain, it had done it well. She'd exclaimed just that as she'd stood, staring down at the remains of an Albino Deathclaw; its clawed hands several feet from its body as Jack snicked his serrated carbon edged blades back into his arm sheaths, where she'd installed them.
"These work great by the way." he noted. Sam shook her head. Jack had gotten very focussed, almost monosyllabic the last few hours, no more leaping about like he was on the moon as the reality of how dangerous it was out here set in. He was taking his duty to keep them both alive out here seriously and she couldn't have appreciated it more. Everything out here wanted to kill them, even the air. Lightening cracked overhead, reducing visibility as a brutal radiation storm began to close in casting an eerie green glow overhead to add to the red haze. Sam was tracking it on her sensors that had limited capability out here, but so far she'd not found much of a place to find shelter. Jack trudged beside her pointing to what looked like an old billboard in the distance. He stood looking around bemused before he started scraping down with his foot and she followed suit.
"I think we're on top of a building." he pointed out and she followed his line of sight. The ground was so twisted and huge drifts of dust and dirt had completely covered it Sam realised as Jack found a door – or what he thought could work as one, possibly an old vent cover. He blew it off its hinges with a few carefully placed frag mines on a delayed timer and they dived inside as the worst of the storm seemed to reach them.
Sam took in her surroundings as they descended into what she realised was a concrete set of stairs. "I think it's a multi-story car park." she voiced aloud and approached a stairwell door, kicking it open with her armoured boot. The door crumpled in and she stepped out pleased to note that she was right; it was full of abandoned cars. It looked strangely intact inside apart from the level of rust from the atmosphere. It seemed like the enclosed earth around the structure had done a good job of sealing it off from the elements. She noted that the radiation had dropped several levels inside here she supposed they had the concrete to thank for that. Not enough to think about taking a stroll outside the suit, but enough that the scrubbers and shielding weren't having to work quite so hard.
"Well we're not in Kansas anymore Dorothy." Jack replied with a touch more humour now they were out of the worst of it as he planted his feet and took a good look around. Then without warning he kicked a can down the line of cars, Sam startled her gun up as she watched it clatter loudly all the way to the bottom of the ramp. She spun on him about to chastise him for being so reckless when a group of feral Ghouls rose and descended on the can he'd kicked. Jack took them out with a series of clean and quick head shots. Only then did he glance back at her and she was quite glad that her surprised look was hidden behind the mask. Sometimes she forgot that he might play the fool, but he really wasn't one.
"I figured these people were entombed with the cars. Stands to reason there would be Ghouls down here. Probably doing that hibernating thing. We're fresh meat." he shrugged and the suit mostly muffled the gesture. "Don't get too near the cars." he warned her needlessly.
Sam swallowed. "Yes Sir." she replied and he had the good sense not to call her on slipping back into that honorific. She was more than happy for him to take charge out in the field; that was a back and forth easier than breathing.
For the next six hours they had to wait out the storm and take the chance for a rest whilst they were sheltered inside the building. Not that they could take off the damn suits to get comfortable; sheltered it might be but it wasn't radiation proof as the Ghouls could attest. Fortunately she'd expected this and optimised the suits using Ingram's frame as the guide to add an inbuilt life support system which provided nutrients and extracted waste directly into and out of their blood streams through several subdermal probes. It wasn't comfortable but it was efficient. Enclosed inside the suit, out of contact with her body, she started to get an inkling of what life had sentenced Ingram to. Granted Ingram didn't have the helmet but she was trapped like this every day. It was a miserable and disconnecting feeling when all she really wanted to do was look into Jack's eyes and reach out and hold his hand; feel his skin and his touch. She held out her metal hand and he wrapped his metal clad fingers around it. Outside of the Glowing Sea she'd been working on a prototype that rigged the HUDS to project an image of the person inside the suit onto the front of your helmet mask so that it felt like you were talking to a person. But, it was still a work in progress and as with anything that relied on a signal, it wouldn't have worked with all the interference out here.
"We should try and get some sleep. I've got first watch. I've rigged us a perimeter. We'll at least know if something creeps up on us but I reckon this might be the safest bet we have out here." Jack reasoned and she nodded, trusting his assessment. It was after all relatively secure in this area now. They'd taken out dozens of Ghouls and nothing else had moved in a few hours.
Sleep though was elusive; sleeping inside a metal frame with your body held at unnatural positions and your ears on high alert, trying to pick out noises. She knew she needed to rest but in the end she got a maybe twenty minutes at a time for the next three hours, shooting awake at the most inopportune moments, having to content herself with an uneasy doze. It was almost a relief when she got to take her shift; now at least she could stop pretending. Jack slept. She wasn't sure if that was a credit to him or his trust in her but she was mildly envious of that ability right now. Usually, it was the other way round. She could go out at the drop of a light. Jack would toss and turn unable to shut off.
They moved out at first light, what there was of it out here. The gloom of light barely better than dark as the headlamps on their helmets cut through the dust and gloom of the radiation clouds above. Sam checked her PipBoy. The map still functional at a limited range of a few 100m but the compass was going haywire. Based on the structure they'd just come from and using the old map of this area of Boston, she had been able to orient them to the nearest visible structure. At least it gave them a heading towards Fort Hagen.
"I don't like this." Jack told her as they skirted a pit of Radscorpions and Bloodbugs, who were feeding from pools of irradiated water out of which, on occasion, a feral Ghoul would erupt and be torn to shreds in moments.
"What's to like?" Sam replied watching it unfold in front of her with quiet horror, her shoulder already aching from having kept the gun pressed up so tightly, her finger inches from the trigger, the position making her twitchy. "I thought the Wasteland was bad." she admitted to Jack as they bumped shoulder to shoulder to get over a particularly difficult ridge. "But this is a hellscape."
Jack muttered something under his breath and she thought she would probably agree with whatever sentiment that was. "Jack. If I'm right about our bearings, we should be coming up on the Crater of Atom soon." she informed him, her eyes scanning the distance and seeing nothing.
Jack glanced around, his helmet turning as he tried to get a glimpse before he picked up his scope and had a good look, then pointed. "I see something. Valentine said there were nutters, cultists that survived out here, right?"
"The Church of the Children of Atom, yes." she replied. Jack nodded, "Yeah, that would probably explain that". She turned, following his finger, to see a man stood just off the rise ahead of them, the fog whipping around him almost masking him in its gloom. Sam stopped dead and stared. He had no protection. None at all. But he looked … completely normal. She'd expected a cult of Ghouls. It had been the only explanation that made sense. But this man stood there with undamaged unbroken skin, a little thin and unkempt in his rags but perfectly fine. Jack took point and the man waited patiently for them even offering a genial wave as they drew closer and she felt the mad urge to turn around and go back, or in any other direction that towards this impossible man.
"I don't like this." she murmured. Aping his earlier words. Her radiation meter shot up another few points every few steps they took closer to what she was beginning to realise might well be the Crater itself, which would explain how he seemed to appear out of nowhere.
"Oh I don't know… friendly looking chap in the middle of a radiation storm, worth a peek at least." Jack replied with false enthusiasm, the wryness in his tone sharp enough to cut glass. So at least he was as keen as she was to find out what fresh hell this was. "Just don't let them take the guns." he replied, before he lifted his arm and gave a wave as they got in range of their patiently waiting 'friend'.
"Hello there!" Jack called out, his good ol' boy attitude trying to make its way past the suit.
"Welcome weary travellers." The man in the white-ish rags announced stepping towards them and Jack kept his gun to hand. "Have you come to give thanks to the Great Atom at this most holy of places?" he enquired looking to each of them with an earnestness that was frankly unnerving. He reminded her of the salesmen she struggled to get off her porch back in their world.
Sam hesitated. Jack filled the gap. "Sure. That would be great. Let's worship away." Jack replied and she smirked at the sarcasm in that tone which their guide clearly missed if his banal smile was anything to go by, as he ushered them forward.
"Come, into Atom's light, I will guide the way." he replied in a flat tone that absolutely screamed brainwashed cult to Sam. She glanced once more had her radiation meter and considered just turning around, but Jack was already ambling away behind him and she glanced behind her. In fairness it wasn't all that much better anywhere else out here, and at least here they might learn something they could use to protect themselves, because they clearly had a secret.
They followed the man down the sides of what remained of the crater. "Satan's pit." Jack rasped at her as they went. She could make out buildings carved out of the side of the rock or constructed at the base. She checked her readings again, staring at them in disbelief. They should be puddles of goo; their cellular structure ripped apart by this much radiation. And yet, inexplicably, there was a thriving community here of seemingly healthy people… although it was clearly still a cult of some sort.
Jack was up ahead, questioning their guide in that probing way of his. She caught a few words but she was more interested in looking around and taking in the children and adults that were coming and going here. She counted maybe thirty people at first glance, packed into shacks made of metal or wood or whatever they'd managed to scavenge. Nothing that would explain their survival, certainly nothing to offer protection from the worst of the radiation which was spiking on Sam's meter again.
"The radiation storms are the biggest problem but they don't bother us inside the Crater. Atom protects us, Atom provides. Out of nuclear annihilation comes new life, new purpose. This is creation. This is Atom's will. All those that are blessed shall bask in Atom's Glow." she heard their guide informing Jack, who turned and gave her a thumbs up in his suit glove, which she hesitantly returned. Not feeling in the slightest bit reassured by that, but she supposed as long as he was keeping them busy.
They were taken to the leader of this little group. They caught the tail end of the sermon the woman was delivering to a seemingly enthralled crowd.
"Yea, your suffering shall exist no longer. It shall be washed away in Atom's Glow. Burned from you in the fire of his brilliance. Each of us shall give birth to a billion stars formed from the mass of our wretched and filthy bodies. Each of us shall be mother and father to a trillion civilizations. Each of us shall know peace, shall know an end to pain and shall know Atom in all his glory." The woman finished and raised her hands as if basking in the radiation, her followers did the same, before touching their foreheads in a circular motion before uttering some hushed words she didn't catch.
"Go, with Atom's Glow my Children." She finished, dismissing the small group who wandered away, brushing past them and Sam got a good look at a few of them up close. They were utterly unremarkable just like their guide. No sores, or obvious deformities or damage of any kind. Sam grit her teeth and forced herself to keep calm, there were any number of reasons she reminded herself, some sort of natural shielding, the food, water perhaps… technology?
The people dispersed and their guide beckoned them down, whispering to the side with this leader as she and Jack slowly made their way, noting that the cultists were all armed with simple weapons. Nothing that she thought would trouble them but it meant they weren't pacifists and any aggressive action, however benign, would probably be treated as such.
"Welcome travellers. I am Mother Isolde, keeper of this flock. Atom has seen fit to bring you to us so that you might bask in his Glow. Please, come and be welcome here."
Sam and Jack nodded, trying to feel welcome in a place that should have killed these people but hadn't. "Are they Synths?" Jack hissed at her, although his voice modulator didn't exactly reduce the volume. "Or robots? Something not affected by radiation?" he suggested, which she'd already considered briefly.
Sam shook her head thoughtfully, her eyes on a group that were definitely eating food in some sort of kitchen area. "It makes sense, but if they are, they don't know that." she let Jack follow her eyeline and he grunted.
"Yeah that sounds about right. Damn Railroad. I bet this lot are a bunch of head-screwed Synths whose memory dumps didn't take. Poor bastards don't know what they are. No wonder they're a bunch of whacko's worshipping radiation."
Sam wasn't so sure. "Jack, Synths with organic components, like the Gen-3s you've described, wouldn't survive out here any better than a human, even with FEV giving them a regenerative edge. Their cells would be torn apart at the molecular level like everything else. Whatever they are, I don't think they're Synths." She eyed the leader again and stalked over to her. "I just need to talk to her a minute. Why don't you go do what you do best, and stick your nose in somewhere." she told him quickly, hurrying after the Cult Leader, Mother Isolde and not waiting for Jack to comment.
"Welcome my child." The Mother inclined her head at Sam.
Sam smiled and realised seconds later that it was wasted effort as she couldn't see that behind the damn helmet. "Thank you. You've been very gracious hosts, allowing us into your Church like this." she offered, trying to sound as friendly as possible despite the suit.
"What Atom provides is welcome to all that are willing to embrace his Glow." She eyed the suit Sam was in. "Perhaps you would like to get comfortable and remove your Armour … to better appreciate the Glow?"
Sam shook her head. "Oh I'm good thanks, it's very comfy in here." she responded quickly, "But I would like to know more about your Church. Do you have scriptures … or teachings I could read?" It seemed to be the magic words. She was ushered inside to a 'sanctum' and a number of scrolls and texts were offered. Sam thanked her and set about reading. One passage in particular caught her attention and she approached Mother Isolde.
"I'm interested in this chapter, here. Where it talks about giving birth to new life, new universes." Sam asked, not able to make it all out. Some of it didn't seem to be in English anymore and had devolved into a series of circular and pictographic writing. Daniel would have loved this; figuring out what was likely a whole new language and this completely new culture. Although, maybe not, given that he'd died the last time he was exposed to a significant amount of radiation. She highly doubted they'd have gotten him within several miles of this place. Justifiably so. It had been an awful way to die and was pretty much all she'd been thinking about since they'd stepped out here.
Mother Isolde took the writings and scanned over it. "Ah yes. I see why a wanderer such as yourself would be interested in this. This talks of Atom's divine Origin. You see, within Atom is the atomic mass of all creation. Within Atom is an entire universe." Isolde told her firmly. "Atom teaches us that when an atom splits, the universe divides and becomes two. Such is the Glory of Atom. A divine deity, creator of new worlds through the Great Division."
Sam nodded, a horrible kind of inkling forming despite the waffle this woman was spouting. It was the very essence of the Big Bang theory; from destruction comes life. Universe after universe, reborn and unending, it was the essence of a multiverse theory, given as she was currently standing in a parallel Universe she wasn't about to throw stones. "So the nuclear explosions created by the Great War … this created Division?" Sam asked.
Mother Isolde was beaming at her, "Such glorious Division created boundless universes in a single instant. All unified in Atom's Glow. Atom is transformation. Through it can we all achieve Division. In his Glow we are broken apart and reborn, releasing all of the worlds within us. This is as it is written in the 'Book of Origin!'" Isolde told her, pressing her hands to her forehead and bowing gently in supplication to this Atom.
Sam considered this. Her life so far had taught her never to dismiss local customs out of hand even if they seemed simplistic; she'd learnt that lesson early on from the Nox. And what had Thor and his people been, if not a benign God at one point to the primitive peoples of Earth. "Do you ever see this Atom? … or hear him talk to you. Does he ever perform miracles?" Sam questioned and Mother Isolde straightened, a flicker of something in her features that Sam thought was challenge.
"Miracles?" she huffed, "To stand in the Crater of Atom bare-skinned and unharmed, is that not evidence enough of divine intervention?" she pointed out astutely and Sam felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Oh she did not want to be here anymore.
"It just might be." Sam replied cryptically trying not to sound quite as unnerved as she felt. "So," she changed the subject abruptly. "We're actually looking for someone. A man called Kellogg, or he was a man. I'm not sure what he is now. We think he has a base nearby here." she asked, deciding they had nothing else to lose. What were the odds anyway that they'd have seen him.
Mother Isolde nodded, "Yes we know of a man who came from whence you speak. Cursed for his sins. Atom's Glow has corrupted him in body and mind." she confirmed. "But his name was not Kellogg. This wretch was known as Virgil. If he lives, you will find him in the caves to the East of here." She pointed in the direction and Sam made a note of that. Deciding to quit whilst she was ahead as whatever secret these people held to surviving radiation, she wasn't going to learn it in the next few hours. She thanked Mother Isolde and took her leave quickly. That uneasy feeling hadn't abated since she'd started to think about an actual 'God-like' alien benefactor and she was acutely aware that it was growing. She felt 'watched' like something had set its great eye on her and it set her teeth on edge. In fact it was once a feeling she'd once become all too intimately familiar with. That dark suspicion she'd had for the last twenty minutes or so was crystallising into an actual thought and she wanted to be out of here before she let herself really 'think' it.
She met up with Jack; he was standing off to one side looking peevish. Even through the helmet she could read it in his body language and tone. "Thank God. Carter this lot are nuts!" he exclaimed. "Seriously, calling them a bunch of whacko's would be underselling it." he scoffed. "Plus, they have those weird gamma gun things like we got from Cabot. That same weird dish design, firing radiation."
"Yes, well I'm not sure how whacko they are, but I think whatever power is keeping them alive might be very real…I think they might be worshiping an Ancient." Sam blurted out.
Jack turned his masked head onto her sharply. "Come again?" he asked sounding both alarmed and confused.
"An Ancient, calling itself Atom." she repeated. "Or at least something like one. This one clearly has taken on a role of a deity, there's a whole religion evolved around it with their Book of Origin which is basically their bible." she admitted, feeling that watched sensation ripple over her again and she shuddered. "Although its fairly fire and brimstone, death and destruction." She added.
"Bit of a stretch don't you think, from whackos to Ancients? I mean I know they're nuts but … really? Ancient worshippers?" Jack mumbled, looking back at the Crater again. "I'm not seeing it."
"Well, we know they exist in this universe Jack. The Stargate being here for one and whatever the hell happened to Lorenzo Cabot. But they may be nothing like the beings in our universe. I mean for one thing I'm getting the feeling that their non-interference policy with those 'below' didn't stand. This one is definitely acting like a deity."
"Why would it do that?" Jack pressed, sounding hard pressed to believe it. "I mean I know Oma liked a bit of attention with her wily all-knowing guru schtick but pretty much the rest of them just wanted to float off on a cloud of 'not giving a crap'."
Sam glared at him, irritated that he couldn't see it through the helmet. "Honestly Jack, I have no idea what it's getting out of it!" she snapped, annoyed that she had to not only posit the idea but also fill in the details. She was just trying to speculate at this point. Usually, Daniel would have been able to act as her sounding board when they discovered a cultural development like this.
"Maybe it's some symbiotic arrangement fed by their faith. I mean arguably there could be a measurable transference of energy from the act of worship." she proposed sharply. They were energy beings and she knew they could 'share' their essences, she recalled that vividly in fact from her own experience. "Their scriptures talk about the Great Division and it's not as crackpot as it sounds on the surface." she explained, trying to convince him that the knot of tension she could feel in her gut about this wasn't her imagination, something here was 'off'.
"Symbiotic worship." he harrumphed, "So what? 'Believe in me and I'll give you a minor miracle in exchange for your soul. That sounds more demonic than deity to me." he pointed out.
"Well, gods and demons are just flip sides of the same religious teachings aren't they?" Sam replied. "But there's something familiar about it. They're talking about the Big Bang. Out of death comes life. Endless iterations, Universe upon universe in the dying 'glow' of another. The conversion of energy and matter cycles. Its origin of life stuff, at the very least parallel universes." He was staring through his helmet at her but she got the impression his eyes had glazed over a while back. "The point is Jack that whatever 'It' is …" she air quoted, made more difficult in the suit, "… it's here!" she exclaimed. "I mean what more proof do you need? These people are immune to radiation because this 'Atom' wants them to be."
"Sam … I … what?" he asked sounding beyond confused.
"Jack, you have Ancient genes. Can't you … I don't know … feel it?" she asked exasperated. He turned looked around, made a show of waving his hands.
"I feel tingly." he bit out grudgingly, making it sound ridiculous.
"Tingly?" Sam asked gritting her teeth, honestly for such an apparently advanced human he could be such a dolt.
"Look that's all I got." he huffed, "I'm sorry. You know I'm not good with this stuff. Hell, even when that stuff was fully in my 'fron' I mostly tried to ignore it." he replied sounding at least mildly apologetic, although she noted that he'd recalled the word for 'head' in Ancient. She wondered for a moment if he'd deliberately used the Alteran word or if that had been a slip and decided she didn't want to know. Sometimes she wondered just what the side effects would be of having an entire database that even the Asgard couldn't fully comprehend re-writing your consciousness, twice. Surely there had to be some side effect, she found it hard to believe that simply yanking all that data out couldn't simply erase the changes to his brain. Having had her own consciousness overwritten several times, she could safely say there were definitely side effects. She'd always been good with computers, but that was nothing compared to how innate it had become after she'd literally found herself as binary code sat inside a computer somewhere. Even the memory of that seemed to give her a migraine. But there was a more direct reference she had to this whole thing that was making her uneasy and spoke directly to that 'watched' feeling that wouldn't stop prickling her skin.
"Jack, I'm talking about Orlin." she barked out, backing away feeling a flush of embarrassment. "This… it feels like Orlin did when he was observing me." she admitted and Jack stopped. Orlin was a touchy subject; arguably they hadn't been at their best that year. Now she suspected it had been because Jack had been doing everything he could to push her away and of course had been a complete asshat about it. The way he and the entire team had treated her around Orlin, even siding with Simmons to assume she'd gone nuts, had left her cold and confused.
"Right, Orlin. Little glowing Ancient guy that followed you home, played hide and seek." he let out a huff. "Did his 'sharing' thing on you?" he added sounding somewhat peevish and perhaps a little concerned for the first time about that which she could hear clearly now that he was no longer bothering, or having to, mask it. He'd have read her report of course, and she nodded, before realising the gesture was mostly lost in the suit but she was impressed he remembered that much about the event given as he'd hardly seemed to care at the time that an alien had been stalking her.
"Yes. That alien. The one you didn't believe was there. Called me crazy I think … or was it overworked and in need of a life!" she snapped and he didn't rise to it. She wondered if the mask was hiding an eye roll from her and decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.
"Look, I don't know how to explain it but whatever he did to me that day, he opened me up to something. To them I guess or to their energy. But I'm telling you I can feel 'It' watching. It's like a breath on the back of my neck. Jack whatever this Atom is, or was, I'm betting it shares at least some history with the Ancients before they ascended."
Jack spun on the spot looking out and back to the Crater. "Well hell Sam. What do you want to do, chat to it? Because in case you've forgotten, they aren't the chatty type. Daniel's been up there. They weren't big on assisting." he muttered and she knew he was thinking about Daniel, of all people, being forced to leave him in Ba'al's cell, and having to stand by and watch as Anubis reigned merry hell on their world and the Galaxy.
"I think we should leave." Sam replied tersely, "Before it realises we're not from around here. Because it doesn't feel like Orlin did. He was a pure soul, curious and compassionate. But this, this feels …" She trailed off with a shudder, wondering how to explain what she sensed when she looked into that crater. "It's like this place is sat in something's mouth … and it's ravenous."
"Okay. Points for the creepy visual there but I'm sticking with Satan's pit." Jack blew out a sound like exasperation. "But you know … and I'm just throwing it out there … if this one's not so picky about non-interference so long as it gets a bit of worship, I'm open to saying a prayer each night if it can click it's heels and get us out of here?" he proposed and she suspected he wasn't entirely joking.
"I don't think it works that way Jack. We've never seen any evidence that the Ancients could travel to or even influence alternate Universes. Besides, I don't want to get stuck worshipping anything that calls itself a God of Radiation. Do you?"
They made a hasty retreat after that and Sam felt the pressure on the back of her neck ebb away with every step she took out of the Crater until she could breathe easily again; like an oppressive weight had gone from around her chest. Jack could obviously hear her taking in large gasping breaths. "You okay?" he asked and she nodded.
"Better out of that hole. I think we should avoid the Children of Atom where possible. Whatever was down there I think we just got its attention and I'm not sure that's a good thing to have."
"Fair enough." Jack muttered. "Kind of wishing we'd bought that Ancient zapping gun with us now though." Jack added and Sam nodded, but the gun was stashed safely at the Castle, hidden within the armoury. Much like the zats buried in Sanctuary they'd decided the weapons were too dangerous to be exposed out in this world, or that they could expose them as 'aliens'.
At least with the Crater behind them they were able to get their bearings. Sam steered them south-west, heading for what she hoped was the remains of Fort Hagen. The landscape became bleaker and more barren as they went. The wind whipped across the tundra, the dust swirling around so heavily that any visibility was barely more than a few feet ahead.
"You know, if we ever get to go through the Gate again, I'm never going to complain about a regular old storm." Jack grumbled. "Wind, hail, rain, sleet, thunder and lightning, sand and dust storms. I can take all of those things … just maybe not all at once." he added and she couldn't help but agree.
It took them the better part of four hours trudging across the cooked ground until they came across a structure that had to be Fort Hagen. They both stopped and stared. Sam felt her heart beating wildly in her chest as she let her head take in the frankly heart stopping sight that had emerged from out of the radiation haze. 'Oh shit' was her one resounding thought.
"Sam," Jack let out a sound close to a hiss through his voice modifier, his unease clear from just that one word as he stopped dead beside her and simply stared at the sight that had greeted them. "I'm not imagining a giant concrete pyramid am I?"
"No." she managed slightly breathless as she stared up at the concrete sloping structure with a small, flattened top which she imagined was for aerial landings, the structure half buried in dust but unmistakable.
"Oh good, that's good. For a second there I was worried I'd sprung a leak and my brain was turning to mush." he deadpanned. Jack waited another beat, his voice expressing his confusion loud and clear. "I thought there were no pyramids on this planet."
Sam shook her head, "Jack, I get that your natural instinct is to ask me what the hell this is because usually I have a clue … but this is another Universe. I'm as clueless as you."
She turned to find him staring at her, "Oh I seriously doubt that." He deadpanned, and even through the face mask she could tell he was giving her a smoulder and she smirked, encased in metal tanks and he was still trying to flirt. Points for effort.
"So oh clueless one," he continued, "Do what you do best would you and hypothesise for me here. Because I'm seeing a big ass concrete pyramid in the middle of a nuclear blast crater. My head is going straight to Goa'uld."
Sam snorted. "Fine. I'd hypothesise that it's a coincidence of design. Something the humans on this planet came up with on their own."
"Earth Carter … it's Earth." he reminded.
"Fine 'Sir'." she bit out and he sighed at her deliberate use of the term, in response to her surname out of his mouth.
"Sorry. Force of habit when you start hypothesising." he apologised. "Continue … please Sam."
"That's all I've got." she shrugged with a smile she knew he'd hear in her voice.
"Okay. Two questions for you to hypothesise some more with." he turned and raised his finger. "One … why the hell is it still standing when everything else around here is as flat as a pancake or burnt out, or weirdly upside down?" He raised another finger, "Two … how the hell do we get in?" Jack pointed to the structure's lower half which seemed to be buried in ash and debris which she imagined resulted from the shifting land mass created in the initial blast wave.
"Better question would be how did Kellogg get in if he's in there? We find that point then we can get in too." she replied and bent to examine the structure's walls. "I don't think it's concrete either." she added, "This is some sort of composite I've not seen before. I think there's metal in this. I'd imagine this whole building from a structural and compositional point of view was designed to withstand a blast just like the one that hit it."
"Handy." Jack replied.
"Or strategic." she added. "This thing seems to be giving off some sort of signal." Sam added glancing at her readings. "I wonder what the hell this place was before if they knew it might need to withstand a blast. Although it wasn't all that big of a blast to be honest." she added and he spun, staring at the wasteland around them with the faint green glow and circling rad storms.
"What, not that big a blast? Sam, look at this place!" he groused. "How much bigger a blast could you get? … everything's gone."
"Oh I'm not saying the consequences of the blast weren't devastating. I'm just saying it wasn't as bad as it could be." she qualified, rambling on quickly to diffuse the tension she could feel building in Jack, already they'd had Ancients and now pyramids, he was justifiably getting twitchy.
"They seem to have moved away from thermonuclear bombs on this planet, preferring the small fission yields like the mini nukes or the M28s we found. But this was the result of something like a surface impact of an enriched neutron bomb." she waited and he didn't respond.
"Sam …" he started sounding faintly exasperated. "I know theoretically what a nuke is. I also know, on occasion, how to disarm one seeing as I've been trained." She was reminded vividly of the Naquadah enriched asteroid sent by Anubis. "However, to say that I understand any of that would be vastly overstating it. I know 'nuke bad' basically."
"Oh," Sam conceded, her brain ticking over on instinct to explain the concept, "Well, for a neutron bomb like the one I suspect this was, the yield of the explosion itself was probably only in the one to five kilotons range. Depending on the nuclear material. A blast wave like that would be enough to flatten this area in the Glowing Sea and reach some of the surrounding areas if it was set off at ground level. But it was designed to leave structures outside the blast wave relatively intact. Its main weapon was radiation and thermal. Which the neutron bomb would have put out in vast quantities. Depending of course on what they used for the missile's shell. Given that we're still detecting lethal levels of radiation today, I'm thinking they used some sort of 'salted bomb' or at least that's what we called them on our Earth." Jack was silently staring his breath coming in short bursts out the respirator, but he didn't interrupt or shush her and he had asked technically…
"So the bomb casing would likely be made out of an unstable element that set off another chain reaction when being bombarded by the escaping neutrons from the fission reaction, which would have significantly increased the radiation level and type that it released on detonation." She concluded, "I couldn't say for sure, maybe something like a Cobalt shell, but we abandoned that style of nuclear warfare on our Earth out of fear we'd … well break the planet." she admitted, musing internally as she glanced once more at her PipBoy and noted the map marker that showed a nuclear reactor site on the outskirts of the Glowing Sea.
"If that wasn't bad enough, if we add to that the fact that these things were set off all over the planet, throwing huge quantities of radioactive fallout into the atmosphere for generations and resulting in circling radiation storms. Then we combine that with all the abandoned or damaged nuclear power stations, nuclear technology lying around decaying and the sheer number of nuclear waste sites that litter this area …." she paused to breathe and Jack was standing quite still, staring. "… well I'd say that would explain the radioactive soup of this place." she trailed off, realising she'd possibly gone off on a tangent and he still hadn't said a word.
"Quite." Jack replied and she heard the terseness there, the smirk in his tone, even if she couldn't see him but she suspected.
"Please tell me that didn't …?" she asked faintly mortified that he could possibly be turned on right now by her technobabble.
"Oh it definitely did." he chuckled. "I am never going to be able to get through a briefing with you ever again. You realise this right?"
Sam sighed and bit her lip, holding back the remark that at least, for once, it might keep him awake in one. "Could you please focus?" she chastised.
"I am focused." he replied firmly with something that sounded like a promise and a challenge in his voice.
"On getting inside." Sam rolled her eyes trying to get him back on track.
"Oh Samantha … I can assure you I'm one hundred percent focused on getting inside." He replied with enough innuendo to sink a ship. Sam was almost glad for the helmet because she couldn't help but smirk, feeling a faint blush colour her cheeks and she definitely didn't want to encourage him.
"The building Jack, for crying out loud! Will you get your head out of the gutter." she bit out, annoyed that she couldn't quite keep the amusement from her tone. Even in a wasteland the man had to be an incorrigible flirt.
"Oh right. That!" he huffed. "Fine." he sighed through the respirator. Jack walked up to the structure and kicked the concrete pyramids edge with his metallic foot, scuffing his boot rather than the structure. Sam ignored him as he went out to do a sweep of the perimeter. She suspected that if anyone was going to get them in without resorting to an explosive, it was going to be her. She pulled a radar pulse device out of her belt pack and placed it on the ground away from the structure, activating it and observing the readout on the PipBoy. She wanted to be surprised by what she found but she wasn't; it seemed about par for the course out here.
"Jack!" she called him back and showed him what she'd found; a vast underground complex.
"Ooh a bunker, now there's a surprise." he sighed. "Don't suppose there's a backdoor?"
"Possibly." Sam picked up the radar pulse beacon and started mapping the area every few hundred feet. It led them a few clicks away to the outskirts of the Glowing Sea. She glanced up, staring at what they'd come to with a frown.
"You sure you're reading that thing right?" Jack queried, stepping up onto the porch of what was undeniably an abandoned wooden shack which, compared to the concrete pyramid over the way, wasn't exactly screaming super-secret military base but then maybe that was the point.
"Got to say I'm feeling a little underwhelmed by this." Jack kicked the side of the shack and his foot went right through the beams this time. Why he felt the need to poke or kick everything to test it she had no idea she thought, mildly amused at what she could well imagine was his current pout beneath that helmet.
"There's a part of the structure, about twenty feet below us, that seems to be connected all the way back to the Fort Hagen structure. Whatever this place is, I think we've found our backdoor."
"Sweet." Jack replied and together they headed into the shack. The wooden door came away in his hand and he chucked it to the side. The place didn't improve inside. "So other than a serious level of funk and mould, this place has literally nothing going for it." he muttered, sweeping aside a stack of papers on a broken desk and examining the bookshelf with nothing left on it other than a few broken items.
Sam glanced around her HUDS scanning and dismissing useless items as junk and debris. The signal she was picking up before was still there but faint as she examined the burnt papers and opened up an old filing cabinet, hoping for a clue. Jack was still poking and kicking things.
"Ok. I'll take your funk and raise you a secret room!" Jack called out suddenly, his random approach having hit paydirt as he hit a panel hidden behind the bookcase which opened a metal hatch in the floor. They heard the click of the lock and traced it back to a rug beneath a broken bed frame. Jack kicked it off; they were standing over a dark open metal hatch.
"Wow this thing is so cliché I almost don't want to go in there." he muttered staring down at it. "Ladies first?" he quipped.
"Age before beauty." Sam countered.
"I'm not sure that argument works anymore." he retorted referring to his recent facelift and then darted down before she considered shooting him. Sam rolled her eyes, before the sound of gunfire had her dropping hastily into the hole behind him as an array of turrets went off. Jack was quickly trying to pick off the targets but he was backed into a corner of a long corridor with nowhere to run. The bullets were ricocheting off his armour in a way that wouldn't last forever.
"Bubble turrets. Two on the roof, two meters down. Two more five metres back at the end!" she snapped out, her PipBoy coordinating with her HUDS to reliably tell her just where in hell they were being shot at from. They returned fire and the whir of bullets eventually petered out to leave just them, standing there, panting with their weapons cocked, waiting in the darkened corridor, just the smoke and red flickering emergency light in the gloom.
"Told you always the damn cliché's you gotta watch out for, because really, nothing quite says 'welcome' like a turret to the face, now does it?" Jack snapped, not holstering his gun as he swept down the corridor more cautiously, looking for other less obvious threats. He set off some sort of electrical trap with his foot and proceeded to stand there and hop about for a moment yelling "Numb foot!". Inside the suits there wasn't much she could do but watch and wait for him to try walking on it again. "Damn that smarts!" he snapped eventually and Sam glanced at him feeling a twinge of unease. Jack clearly had a bad feeling about down here and was trying to stay optimistic for her given as this was her mission.
"You okay?" she asked and he grumbled something affirmative, stomping his foot whilst she examined the trap he'd sprung. Some sort of electrical arc, high voltage. "Sorry, I had to switch out some of the electrical buffering for the radiation shielding in these and ground it so that they could act as our life support systems. Right now, they have very little resistance to electrical energy, so try not to stick your hand in anything that might zap it." she warned him, hating that she'd not had enough time to fix that particular flaw but she'd wanted to press on out here before Maxson changed his mind, or Kellogg moved on. God knows it had been nearly six months already since Valentine gave them the news; he might already have bugged out. Although where was more secure than an underground bunker in the middle of a dead zone?
"Before Sam … tell me these things before I stick my head in the proverbial haystack … okay!"
"That would imply you'd wait long enough for me to assess a situation." Sam snipped, taking in the rather disappointing sight that greeted them at the end of the corridor. The room consisted of a desk, and some sort of compact bathroom, lockers and a storage room with food and some fairly meagre supplies.
"Huh, oddly anticlimactic." Jack replied, tossing out an empty box of Sugar Bombs with an annoyed sound as he rifled through the remaining supplies. "I thought after a welcome like that there'd be something good for sure."
Sam was more interested in the desk which she approached now with caution, hoping that wasn't booby-trapped too. Nothing went off so she pushed aside the chair she wasn't going to be sitting in with her Power Armour and started tapping the keys. Nothing. She stooped under the desk and reconnected the wiring, relieved when the screen blinked on. So they still had power. The one benefit of these archaic computers was that they seemed to last forever – even survive a Nuclear Apocalypse apparently.
She found a holotape in one of the top desk drawers and slotted it into her PipBoy whilst the computer slowly blinked back to life.
"This is Government employee number 01198 … oh screw this Government bullshit. This is Buzensky reporting from Federal Surveillance Center K-21B." The young man's voice on the holotape coming out of her PipBoy paused with a weary sigh; Jack approached, listening in. "The sirens, they came so fast, then the alarm. This wasn't the plan. Stevens … he had to go get something out of his car. I had to close the door. Protocol said we had to. God I could hear him screaming outside. He's gone." There was a pause and static, "That was days ago and I'm already running out of food. This place was not as well stocked as they claimed. God damn budget cuts. If anyone is listening to this my name is Jeff Buzensky. Tell my wife Wilma that I love her." The recording ended there and Jack nudged her, pointing to the only other room.
"Skeleton in there died on the damn crapper… his ID badge has got Buzensky on it." Jack told her sounding grim. "Sounds like the poor sod starved to death down here." Sam nodded; they'd stepped over another charred skeleton on the front porch. Sam was guessing that had been Stevens, who'd been too slow to get inside before the bombs fell, although how he hadn't been vaporised she didn't know.
"Looks like they were supposed to man this place twenty-four seven." Jack said eyeing the small office space, "Kind of looks like a dime a dozen waiting room doesn't it?"
Sam frowned, glancing around. Actually Jack had a point. These guys weren't exactly crack agents, they were just manning the fort. Sam tapped on the computer. She input Buzensky's Government ID, handily printed on his ID badge which Jack handed to her. The computer lit up. "Nothing other than logs. He was just a glorified security guard." Sam added, "So what was he guarding? … and how do we get inside? Because I'm telling you Jack, there's more beneath us."
Sam tapped away on the computer again, hacking past the layers of code until she got into an administrator level that poor Jeff Buzensky never had access to either by clearance or ability. A panel opened; Jack approached it and tugged on the handle revealed there. A loud mechanical sound clicked away and a wall section slid aside, just like upstairs, to reveal a solid metal door with a computer panel.
"Score." Jack replied. "Come do your thing and 'open sesame'." He mimicked typing as she slid up to the computer screen. It wasn't hard; she hacked through a few encrypted layers and deactivated another set of turrets that waited just inside. The door clicked open and Jack went through first with this gun raised. There was no need; there was nothing alive inside. Even the security Protectron robot that had clearly meant to be on guard was locked up tight inside it's pod, light blinking away on standby. Sam left it there.
"Now this looks a bit more promising," Jack declared as they stepped out onto a balcony and looked down. They were over the top of some sort of office and lab building, three levels high. In the centre of the floor below them was a moderately sized facility that was clearly used as some sort of government research post. As they headed down to the lower level, they found little of interest in the other levels, other than office space. Even that was curiously devoid of human remains; this place seemed to have been truly abandoned. The systems were in power saving mode with only the faintest of emergency lighting but there were various computer systems and electronic towers lining the walls with more than a dozen small TV monitors dotted about. Most of them seemed to still have power. Sam left Jack to rummage around the other desks and machines, opening up draws for things they could use. She grinned as she watched him retrieve some copper wiring; he knew what she needed out here. Sam focused her efforts on what she hoped was the central command console. This computer was still on; the little cursor still blinking away, patiently waiting for input which she suspected never came.
Jack was examining the walls, ripping off a metal panel to get behind it. "More of that fancy concrete from the pyramid … guess they reinforced this thing too." he called down. "Suppose it would be a bad idea for your backdoor to get blown up!"
"So I found out what they were supposed to be monitoring out here..." She hesitated, a quirk formed on her lips. "Deep space radar telemetry!" she called up to Jack, whose head appeared over the railing.
"Your shitting me!" he declared; his voice distorted in the modulator but she heard his clear disbelief; she shook her head. "Well that can't be good." Jack quipped and she couldn't help but share the sentiment. She had to consider what the hell the odds of them using that exact same cover as Stargate Commands.
"Curiouser and curiouser." she murmured under her breath, more eager than ever now to see just what secrets they'd stumbled on to.
"How are you not more freaked out by this?" Jack groused beside her as she tried to focus on the computer screen in front of her.
"Well, parallel Earth's are meant to be unsettling and let's face it … this isn't the weirdest thing we've seen." she reasoned; she'd personally found their little jaunt to the 1960s on their own Earth more unnerving; but then she'd understood perfectly the implications of screwing that up. "I still haven't gotten over alternate Dr Carter planting one on you … and you really not minding … right in front of me I might add." she reminded him trying to lighten the moment but he remained pointedly silent. She sighed, if nothing else she'd always thought that had been a little insensitive of him, but then if she'd had the chance to plant one on an alternate Jack she can't say she wouldn't have too. Although she might not have flaunted it quite so obviously and especially not in front of General Hammond.
But instead of taking the bait on her little stroll down memory lane, Jack seemed to be vibrating tension in his hulking suit beside her, they were never going to be able to relax in these damn tin cans. Sam sighed reaching up to remove her helmet; the seals hissed and she shook out her hair, taking in a few gulps of recycled stale air. His arm went suddenly onto her shoulder in clear panic.
"It's fine Jack. The air's clean down here. It's completely cut off from the surface and radiation free. You can remove yours too."
He didn't need telling twice; his helmet whipped off and he blinked, his nose wrinkling as he took in the not so fresh air. "Wow, that's not much better …" he muttered looking a little worse for wear; he had dark circles under his eyes. Sam frowned, apparently he'd not had as good a night's sleep as she'd thought.
"Anyway, it looks like they were looking for signs of extra-terrestrial life – just like we were." Sam continued.
"They find any?" Jack asked, coming to stand behind her. "Because I gotta say, our Earth's first contact sort of sucked."
"Maybe." Sam replied choosing to ignore the reminder of the Abydos mission and Ra that no doubt would stir up some dark memories for him. She hit a command and machinery moved; a containment pod of some sort opened, sliding up out of the floor, in long glass cylinder; several in fact, one after another. Sam realised moments later they were specimen chambers. Jack approached one and cleared off the condensation, which seemed to have accumulated, from the glass. His eyes widened with faint horror as he revealed what it contained.
"Oh boy!" Sam exclaimed, unable to contain her excitement.
"You can say that again." Jack replied looking back at her; that unease she'd seen on his face seemed to have doubled. "Sam is that a damn Asgard?" he asked sounding shocked, "I mean, it's not exactly a Little Grey guy, more like Tall Green Men, which isn't nearly as catchy and unthreatening." He quibbled staring up at it with a faintly hopeful and slightly horrified expression on his face. The alien, if that's what it was, as there was no guarantee out here that it wasn't just some sort of horribly mutated human; was also obviously dead and dissected. It's substantial brain floating next to it, but she chose not to mention the obvious as she scanned the information they had on Specimen 08-1XC919.
It was starting to look promising and she held back her excitement a little longer not willing to crush her own hopes again. "Jack, I don't know if it's an Asgard, but I think it really might be an alien." She looked up at him and gave him a tentative smile, that he returned just as cautiously. "The humans of this planet call them the 'Zetans'. I think that's based on the location they believe that they originate from in the Zeta Reticuli Star System. Although that's only because that's the only system they've mapped from the star charts they have … oh my God Jack! … that they got from their crashed ship!" she exclaimed reading aloud, as she clapped her metal gloved hands together excitedly.
"There's a ship?" Jack asked, the start of his own excitement showing as he joined her at the console.
"There was." she grimaced, this was where it got murkier. "It looks like it was being moved before the war, like everything else here of possible alien origin, once they detected that a signal had been broadcast prior to the crash. Some sort of distress signal they theorised. Turns out this place was designated the 'Sentinel Site', secrets within secrets. It was hidden beneath the weapons testing platform of Fort Hagen and was built to withstand a potential alien orbital attack. They were worried they'd come for their crashed ship so they hid it down here. They hoped the pyramid design with the enhanced shielded concrete would be enough, based on the energy type weapons they found in the crash." Sam read out, growing more excited with each passing minute … there was a ship! An actual alien Asgard-like ship! She frowned, staring at the next entries.
"I take it this story didn't have a happy ending given everyone's dead?"
"Apparently the movement of special weaponry from Area 51 to a hidden Boston facility was seen by China as a hostile act. It was one of the reasons Boston was specifically targeted, particularly this site." she looked up into his masked face. "Jack, this place was their backup Area 51 and it was the target of the nuclear strike that decimated the city."
"Yeah, that's a terrible ending." he growled. "Look, I'm not seeing a ship here Sam, so where'd it end up?" Jack questioned.
Sam frowned, "I'm not sure. According to this, there was some sort of outside expertise and funding. And concerns that the secret facility was being watched. There was a last-minute change of instruction. My God, they turned it into some sort of publicity stunt with a place called Nuka World. The ship was taken there and hidden in plain sight." she opened and closed her mouth, she wanted to be surprised, except she really wasn't. "Jack they hid it in an amusement park, as a fairground ride."
She could almost hear his eyebrow raise with that. "How very World's Fair of them." he muttered, "I mean a spaceship's not a spaceship unless it's on public display pretending to be a model right?"
Sam suppressed a smirk despite the situation, she would never admit it but if he had a thing for her 'technobabble', then she definitely had a thing for that 'smart' mouth of his too. "Honestly Jack sometimes I feel like all the bad bits of our world got shoved into a blender and thrown together by some sort of 1960s super-fan to make this particularly fucked up place." Sam laughed, because honestly, why not. He gave her a wise-ass grin and she returned it as they just stared at each other for a moment, accepting the unspoken that it was only in this 'fucked-up' place that there got to be a them at all.
"Okay …" Jack clapped suddenly startling her out of her reverie, "To sum up. We got an Asgard-like alien ship that's most likely out of juice, stuck on top of a space needle in Nuka World that you're going to want to get your oh so clever hands on in a bad way." He gave her a pointed look and she shrugged, seemed like the next logical step. "Excellent." Jack muttered, sounding like it was anything but. "I see no problem with this plan at all… Except we have no idea where Nuka World is or if it's even intact. Or if that damn ship is flight worthy. I imagine being turned into a prop won't have improved it any?"
Sam shook her head. "The ship was busted all to hell and back, inoperable, or so they believed. But they failed to breach the outer hull to get at its secrets. Best guess, it shut down, went into some sort of lockdown failsafe mode – or it ran out of power. They had literally no clue what they were looking at." She tried to find more and smacked the desk in frustration. The ship was what they needed but the Government had been less interested in a hunk of twisted useless metal and more in the occupants and their weapons. Handing it over to Nuka World for a tidy sum and a contract for some special project called Nuka Quantum had been a better deal for a Nation that was prepping for war. Sam pulled up another command and yet more containers emerged from the wall this time. Jack looked inside and pulled out what was unmistakably an Asgard control stone, although it was a shimmering green not black or white.
"Well, it sure looks like their tech." He handed it to her; it seemed to be inert. "Although if they were after weapons, I'm thinking they were barking up the wrong aliens. I can't say I recall seeing any phaser pistols on them … ever."
"Jack, we have no idea what evolutionary path these Asgard went down – if they are even the same species. We can see that physically they look different." she pointed again to their gangly green friend with the somewhat fiercer expression in the containment tube. Its frankly enormous brain floating next to it did support the Asgard theory still being light years ahead of them though. She pulled up another container it hissed as it slid out of the wall unit. "That's some sort of plasma pistol." she pointed to it and Jack retrieved it from the drawer. "Based on the specs, they used it as the basis for the plasma pistols we've been using out here." That she was faintly impressed with, retrofitting alien tech was always a hobby of hers.
But Jack had made no attempt to go for the pistol and was instead still staring at the green body floating in the vat. "We should take a tissue sample with us." he told her looking back to see her response.
"Why?" Sam asked faintly horrified by the idea.
"Because …" Jack huffed for once sounding like she was being the stupid one, "… if there are Asgard out here and alien ships, then it's starting to look a lot more like we might actually get to blow this popsicle stand!" he pointed out and for the first time in a long time she heard something like excitement there.
"Which means if we do get back, given as we have no idea the state of play, I figure we should come baring Asgard-shaped … well, dangly bits." he pointed his hand in a general circular motion at the body's groin area looking uncomfortable, "I mean, I assume that is what I think it is and not some odd … growth?" his jaw was clenched as he implored her not to make him say it. Sam's eyes widened in surprise. She hadn't really noticed it herself years of dealing with Asgard and their penchant for nudity had taught her to keep her eyes up; but she glanced down now and was surprised to note that the body did indeed have genitalia which meant that these Asgard-like aliens weren't asexual clones. Now that was interesting, the Asgard on their world had been looking for a cure for their cloned DNA dead-end for millennia.
"Wow… that's actually not a terrible idea." She admitted and Jack rolled his eyes looking faintly exasperated. "If this is our ticket home your right ,having an Asgard home run on our side couldn't hurt." Sam was also mildly impressed that Jack was seriously considering her 'go home' plan again; this little shot in the arm clearly having restored some of his faith if he was making strategic contingency plans. Although the thought of trying to fit back in with the Airforce right now… well she wasn't entirely sure how that was going to go for either of them. The one thing they'd had in this place was freedom to be themselves… and with each other. She put a stopper in that line of thought for now, she had more pressing issues and they were still in a bunker somewhere in an irradiated fallout zone, hunting for a child stealing killer working for robots.
"There's some DNA samples stored in temperature stable vials in there." she pointed to a container, "Grab several. We can stash it at Sanctuary with our gear and in our room at the Castle, if we tell Ronnie it shouldn't fall into Brotherhood hands I'm certain she'll set up a security post for it." She chuckled, then she noted that Jack wasn't smiling, in fact he was giving her a strange look.
"Not going to give it to Maxson and his band of brothers?" Jack snarked, his lips twisting in clear distaste, she'd like to think he wasn't bating her. Sam took a breath, biting back a retort; it had been a long day after all and finding aliens down here was a shock to them both, she was willing to let that one slide for now as she wasn't eager to restart their row.
"No. I'm not." she replied. "I'm not sure making Maxson aware of the fact that aliens exist would be the wisest decision. I'd rather he not start seeing them everywhere as well, its bad enough he's got Synth's on the brain." Sam admitted. "And given as our stories are paper thin as it is…" she trailed off letting him draw the obvious alien conspiracy finger conclusion.
Jack waited a beat, before he gave her a slight nod that he turned into a shrug, going for casual and clearly deciding to move on from the subject he'd just riled. "So, now what?" Jack asked, looking around and finding little else here.
"Well I don't know about you but given as no-one's clearly used this backdoor in over two hundred years, I'm going to get out of this suit and visit the little girl's room." she replied, "Why don't you make yourself useful and find those food stocks that poor Buzensky would have killed for."
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END NOTES:
For SG1 fans, in case you're wondering, yes, the Children of Atom are worshipping an Ori type of Ancient (because this is an alternate reality and I can lol). Plus it fits with both SG1 and Fallout lore that the Ori gain power from their worshippers. As in Fallout wiki there does genuinely seem to be some sort of divine intervention that's keeping the Children of Atom alive; a being or deity, explored in early games too.
And yes the Fallout 4 'Zetan' aliens (little green men) are the equivalent of the Asgard (little grey men) in the SG1 reality. I've gone with the SG1 canon that the Asgard civil war ended on the side of the 'breeders', otherwise known as the Vanir (or Dark Asgard). They even have fancy battle suits a lot like Power Armour! so they never went down the cloning route in my version.
For Fallout 4 fans, you may recognise some of the storylines and locations here, but not quite. For storytelling purposes I've had to change things around a little so Fort Hagen is now in the Glowing Sea (rather than just North of it) and replaced with the look and location of the Sentinel Site. It makes more sense for Kellogg to hide out here, in a shielded location from radiation where no one can get to him (and no way in or out). I also couldn't NOT use the Pyramid location when pulling in aliens into this story! (it looks like this for SG1 fans: The Sentinel Site / Fort Hagen (repurposed in my version) - very Pyramid like!
wikis/fallout-4/Sentinel_Site
The Sentinel Site contents (the bombs for Liberty Prime/quest) have been moved to Fort Strong in the previous Chapter (which kind of made sense given as that was an abandoned nuclear testing site). I've also connected up the Sentinel Site with the Federal Surveillance Centre K-21B because I liked the idea of a back door in and I had a fantastic Mod called Aliens of the Commonwealth by AscendantLight that gave me the idea to make this an alternate 'Area 51' location, which suited my storyline.