Disclaimer: Still not mine.

The blue outfit Jenny is wearing below is meant to be based on Air Force Dress Blues, which is the official outfit for people who work for Cheyenne's government that aren't part of the Cheyenne Defense Volunteers (that is, for all the civilians).

As always, if you think my characterization is off anywhere, let me know.

Wasteland Gate

By Kylia

Chapter 2: The Cheyenne Council

Fort Carson Refugee Camp

Six Months After the NCR Victory at Second Hoover Dam

When she'd heard 'refugee camp', Victoria expected something closer to Bitter Springs and the camp there, but as it turned out...

Not so much.

Funny what you can do when you actually have resources to spare because House isn't tying your hands. General Oliver's failures as a leader hadn't helped, but if House hadn't kept getting in the way, the NCR could have solved a lot of problems in the Mojave a lot sooner.

Then again, if they had, she wouldn't have had a chance to fix them herself, and wouldn't have gotten rich, so... it all balanced out, she supposed.

The inside of Fort Carson was large and expansive, and the structures inside were largely intact - repairs made here and there, some of them slapdash and short term, but it was more than just a tent shantytown. Off in the distance, she even saw what looked like some cropland inside the walls of the fort. Well that makes it easier to resist siege. Not that she thought there were enough soldiers here to man all the walls she was seeing and how they went off into the distance. It would take a several companies of NCR troopers to do that, probably.

Still, as refugee camps went, the place seemed pretty peaceable. Kids were running around, playing, people were going about their business, she saw a few market stalls, people arguing over prices. As they got further from the gate, they were stopped by a short-haired dark-skinned woman in a blue formal-looking uniform.

"Lt. Davis, who are our visitors?"

"Travellers from our west. All the way from New Vegas, apparently. Not merchants or refugees."

"Visitors' fee it is." the woman looked over to them. "Are any of you carrying psycho, jet or Med-X?"

Victoria frowned, "No to the first two, I know that. We had some Med-X before we left New Vegas, but I think we used it all up after that fight near Rand Junction?" She looked back to the others.

"No... I think..." Arcade dropped his bag and searched through it quickly. "No, we still have two doses." Victoria turned back to the woman.

"Is that going to be a problem?"

"Psycho and Jet are illegal here and in Cheyenne, but Med-X is legal, but restricted. If you decide you want to sell it, it'll have to be Doctor Lam or one of her assistants, over that way. We catch you selling it to anyone else, and you'll have a pay a fine... and leave."

"Wasn't planning on selling it, so that all works. Though I do have some excess ammo to sell. Where would I do that?"

"There's some guns and ammo shops over on the far end of the cropland," the woman said. "Anyway, for the four of you, that'll be four Denarii, ten caps or the equivalent."

Victoria pulled out some of the silver coins she'd taken from the Decanus and handed them over. "Here, take a few extra. God knows I hate these stupid things."

The woman didn't refuse the extra money, dropping them through a small hole in the top of a locked metal box after taking a quick look to make sure they appeared genuine.

"Not a fan either, but traders and communities over west still take them over bottle caps, and if nothing else they can be melted down into bars and sold off to the east." She turned to Davis. "Go on back to the walls."

"I need to use the radio first," Davis disagreed. "This woman wants to speak to the Council, and I think they might want to." He gestured to Victoria.

"Alright, go ahead." Davis headed off towards a building that had a series of antennae sticking out of the roof and every window. The woman turned back to Victoria. "If you're looking for a place to stay, there's an inn on the east side, past the houses over there. Rooms are pricey, mostly for visiting traders, but it'll work - it's called the Black Bottle."

The other two that had been with Lt. Davis headed back to the gate after a nod from the woman.

She looked over at them, raising an eyebrow when she look a second look at Raul, but saying nothing.

"Any more questions?"

"Tons, I'm sure, but I'm guessing you'd rather not indulge my curiosity for the next three hours," Victoria said, looking around. She could see here and there, the signs that this really was a refugee camp - the people, most of them, had a slightly hollow, hungry look to them, a lot skinnier than their seemingly prosperous surroundings would suggest. They were also a lot more armed than a place like this, well defended and seemingly safe, would be on the West Coast.

They were more wary too, and she noticed she was getting suspicious, albeit not hostile, looks from some of the 'civilians'. They didn't know her, she wasn't carrying goods, but looked too well off and well fed to be one them...

"Not right now, but if you catch me off duty and buy the beer, sure," the woman said with a smile that... held a little promise. It wasn't hard to catch the intent, though it did throw Victoria for a loop for just a moment.

Huh. Right. They weren't in the NCR anymore, or in Legion territory. She didn't have to be quite so cautious about her preferences for woman anymore. And since she'd long since given up on Veronica picking up on her hints...

"That sounds like fun," Victoria agreed. "I'll probably be over at this Black Bottle by the time you're off duty. Meet me there?"

"Sure." The woman smiled. "I'm Jenny. Jenny Thurmond, by the way," she added.

"Victoria Fernandez," she took off her hat and did an elaborate bow, "a pleasure, bonita." And the woman was actually quite pretty, when Victoria looked her over. That formal outfit wore well on her too. Looks kind of like a uniform - probably is, for that matter.

Jenny smiled prettily, a little bit of light dancing in her eyes, but before she could say anything, Veronica cut in.

"You - you guys couldn't have repaired and rebuilt this place like this just in the last six months? What did you use it for before?"

"Good eye," Jenny nodded. "We used to just use it as extra farmland - kept some people here to guard and work, repaired the other structures on and off as needed. There'd been plans on the drawing board to totally repair and resettle the place for a few decades, I think, but until we starting getting all those refugees, it just wasn't worth the time."

"Okay," Veronica nodded, then turned to Victoria. "I'm going to check out the market, see if there's any interesting little bits of salvage or tech to buy." She looked over at Arcade, "they might have some parts to do that upgrade to your energy pistol I was talking about the other day. I just need a few things and I can probably jerry-rig it."

"Sounds like a plan, I suppose," Arcade nodded.

"Go on," Victoria nodded. "Raul, let's see what price we can get for that ammo and anything else we don't need."

"Sure, sure, Boss," Raul nodded.

Colonel's Office, Cheyenne Mountain Underlevel 4

Six Months After the NCR Victory at Second Hoover Dam

"Colonel Mitchell, Sir?" At the sound of the radio in his office coming to life, Colonel Cameron Mitchell, commander of the Cheyenne Defense Volunteers looked up from his computer where he'd been typing a report. "It's Lt. Davis from Fort Carson."

Mitchell pushed his chair over to the radio and tuned the dial a moment, then replied. "Davis, this is Maj- Colonel Mitchell. No one's supposed to be reporting until tonight. What's the situation?" He'd only just gotten this job three weeks ago and he was still getting used to his new rank.

It wasn't a rank he'd particularly wanted, but he wasn't going to say no to the promotion when the Council offered it.

Better me than that asshole Maybourne or his buddy Simmons. Colonel Hammond's retirement and subsequent election to the Cheyenne Council had left an opening at the top of the Volunteers, and it had come down to him, Maybourne or Simmons as to who got the job. Thankfully, the Council didn't put either one of those jackasses in charge.

Maybourne was a slimy son of a bitch, but at least he had a sense of duty. Simmons, on the other hand...

If he cares about anyone but himself, I'll be damned.

"We've got some visitors from out west, all the way from New Vegas, they say. Their leader wants to meet with the Council. She says it's important."

"Council's busy. She'll have to make an appointment like any other outsider that wants a chat," Mitchell pointed out. "Why are you calling me about it?"

"Because - well... I think the Council will want to meet her. Make an exception. She's not just some random traveller - she's well armed, got some sort of pre-war military armor, fancy looking stuff. And her buddies... plus - she claims to be Victoria Fernandez."

Mitchell furrowed his brow. "Where have I heard that name before?"

"According to some of the traders we've talked to, and what our scouts have said about what the Legion says, she's the woman who killed Caesar, Lanius and a whole bunch of other Legionaries at Second Hoover Dam. Broke the whole army. She's a big deal out west, if what they say is true."

"They also say she's ten feet tall and has orange hair, if I remember right," Mitchell pointed out.

"Well, she doesn't look like that," Davis conceded. "But she matches - more or less - the more realistic descriptions we have for her. And sure, she could just be someone taking the name, but she sure as hell isn't from Legion territory, and she doesn't have the accent to be from Kansas or Nebraska. Plus... I believe her."

Well that's something. One of the reasons Davis was over there on greeting duty was that it was basically impossible to lie to him. Guy had a real knack for picking up lies, half-truths, deception, whole kit and kaboodle. He could tell who was a refugee and who was some would be Legion spy - the Warlord running Denver had tried to send two of his own knock-off Frumentarii into the camp, and Davis had been the one to stop them.

"If she can lie to you, she deserves a meeting with the Council on that alone," Mitchell mused. "Did she say what she wants?"

"Not really. She mentioned she's willing to pay for the Council's time," there was a pause, then, "one of her buddies mentioned something about a 'Project Blue Book'... whatever the heck that is."

Mitchell stiffened.

Crap.

That was a name he knew. He didn't know what it meant, but he knew it was related to the levels of the mountain no-one, not in two hundred years, had ever been able to crack. The first eleven underlevels of the mountain had been his ancestors home the first ten years after the bombs dropped, before limited resettlement of the surface began.

Today, of course, most of the population of Cheyenne lived above ground, in the ruins of the mountain or the grounds outside the former base, but the richest still lived underground, and the Council and all the rest of the official work of the city was done down here.

Extensive searching of the surviving computer archives of the base had turned up only a little information on those sealed sublevels, beneath NORAD. A highly classified, expensive project, powered by it's own advanced fusion generators, with a closed computer system, and...

That was about it. Those limited records carried an implicit suggestion that there could be a lot of tech in there, even more than what was salvaged from NORAD or Fort Carson had motivated people to try, but... the doors just wouldn't budge. Shishkabobs and flamethrowers and a whole host of other weapons had been tried. Everything short of a Fat Man, and when someone had suggested trying that, the idiot had been nearly thrown in prison for sheer stupidity.

These days, the existence of the Project and what was theories about what was there was a closely guarded secret - the Council, the Colonel of the CDV and a few other top people. Probably some others knew about it too, but they weren't supposed to know.

"Sir?"

Mitchell shook his head as he realized he'd just been sitting there quiet for a minute. "I'll talk to the Council, see what they think. She does sound like she might be worth their time. Anyone who can freak the Legion out like that is worth it."

Council Chambers, Cheyenne Mountain Underlevel 7

Six Months After the NCR Victory at Second Hoover Dam

Drinks with Jenny had proven quite fruitful. Not only had the woman filled her in on lots of the details about Cheyenne, Fort Carson and the surrounding area, but she'd been pleasant company for the evening, and then even more so when they'd gone up to her room afterwards.

Cheyenne's history was interesting - members of the US Air force and their families had taken refuge in the underlevels of NORAD after the first bombs fell and while plenty did not make it - supposedly some high-muckety-muck from D.C. had been on his way to the base that morning and never arrived, according to old legend, but all told, some three hundred people had taken refuge in the base. Missiles had hit several places around Colorado springs, and nearly hit the mountain itself, which was a wreck, barely a mountain anymore, in some ways.

There'd been ample supplies - NORAD had been designed to withstand nuclear war, after all. Still, it wasn't enough for them to stay forever. But the radiation had cleared enough after the first year that people in power armor could start salvaging on the surface. That kept them in scavenged food, from wasteland life and from prepackaged stuff. It wasn't very safe, and they had a lot of cancer that first generation and the one after it, but they lived. Eventually, they partially moved to the surface, accepted (carefully and with judicious judgement) some survivors and held off raiders with all the weaponry they had access to - including ten suits of T-45 Power Armor, and one suit of T-51. Energy weapons, plasma weapons, tons of ammo for both, and more mundane options. They'd never gone a-conquering, but for a time, they had tried to play peacemaker for the region before deciding it wasn't worth the effort.

The rise of the Legion had been a problem, especially as they drew closer to Denver - the Hangdog tribe had traded with Cheyenne-based merchants a lot, selling what the salvaged from the ruins of Denver in exchange for food or other goods from Cheyenne, but the Legion had stopped expanding after Denver - a few skirmishes had gone Cheyenne's way without any casualties, and Caesar wanted New Vegas and Hoover Dam.

But even with the Legion there and nominally hostile, there'd been trading with the settlements under the Legion's control, as well as trade with settlements further south and east. Pueblo, Dodge, traders from Cheyenne had gone as far as Kansas City, a great commercial entrepôt, of sorts. The whole region all the way to the extremely toxic and nearly uncrossable waters of the Mississippi was mostly small towns, rural and semi-civilized (or less) tribes, a handful of large cities, raider bands. Merchants travelling together in caravans for safety, small scale conflicts and living on the edge was the norm, but it wasn't any worse than some of areas on the edge of NCR, mostly. No real center of organization.

The most interesting fact was that supposedly, somewhere far north, in what had been Minnesota - Victoria had seen enough pre-war maps of the US - there was...

Well, the Brotherhood of Steel. Or at least, some sort of power-armored, isolationist and tech-obsessed group called the Brotherhood. Jenny had only really heard rumors about it from people who'd heard rumors about it and so on. She knew a decent amount about the rest of Colorado and Kansas, and the nearest parts of Nebraska beyond that, it was most hearsay and rumor.

The whole evening and night had been fruitful, and she'd swapped stories with Jenny, telling her about her journeys around the West, especially in the Mojave.

The next day, Lt. Davis had told them the Council was willing to meet with them, and so they'd trekked the five miles to the ruins of the mountain - the whole place was blasted out, wrecked. Not as bad as the Big Empty, but still, a wreck and a ruin. But the people had made do and the mountain was covered in houses, built from the stone of the mountain, salvaged rubble and bits and pieces from the wasteland, structures made from welded wrecks of Vertibirds destroyed by time or the bombs, and a whole lot more. The people of Cheyenne had proven quite skilled at rebuilding their salvaged little corner of the wasteland.

She'd been asked to leave her friends on the surface, and she'd been disarmed when she entered the mountain before being taken down a still working elevator to the 7th level.

She still had one of her pistols left, the .357 she'd taken from Bison Steve's, hidden on her person, but hopefully this would go peacefully.

"Councillors," Colonel Cameron Mitchell, the polite, soft-spoken commander of the CDV that had greeted her as she stepped off the elevator to the 7th floor, said as they stepped into a conference room, the seven members of the Cheyenne Council - one elected every year, the seats having staggered seven year terms - sitting around the table.

Her eyes immediately gravitated towards one, a bald, grandfatherly looking man. A bit fat, but only just. He sat at the far end of the table from her, the chairman of the Council's meetings for the month by random selection.

George Hammond, former Colonel of the CDV.

"May I introduce Victoria Fernandez," Colonel Mitchell finished.

"Thank you Colonel. Please, stay for this," Hammond said. He looked across the room at Victoria. "Miss Fernandez-"

"Please, Victoria," Victoria interrupted.

"Victoria, then," Hammond nodded. "We've heard a lot about you. Rumors and stories, mostly, of course."

"They're probably grossly exaggerated."

"But you did kill Lanius?" one of the other Councillors asked. "CDV scouts have seen the man, from a distance anyway. By all accounts he earned his brutal reputation."

"He was a beast of man, and I won't say it was easy to kill him, because it wasn't. And I had help, but yeah, I killed him."

"And Caesar?" The same councilor asked.

"Him too. I had something he wanted, he invited me to his base at The Fort to try to buy it from me. Not sure why he thought a woman born in the NCR would ever join up with him, but I supposed he thought I'd fall for his scintillating personality." A few of the Councillors chuckled just a little at that. "We disagreed, and I emptied my pistol into his skull." And then had to fight her way out. In hindsight, that had been... ill-advised. She'd limped out of the Fort with a broken rib, a number of cuts and bullet wounds and a broken arm.

She'd been kept up by Med-X and stubborn will by the time she got back to Cottonwood cove, where her friends - Boone, Cass, Veronic and Arcade in particular, having been left behind at the Cove to deal with the Legionaries there while she met Caesar in complete bad faith, had kept her alive long enough for her to be carried back to the Autodoc at the Follower's Clinic on a makeshift litter.

It was still amazing to her she'd survived at all, and she knew how much she owed to her friends for that.

"It's an impressive track record," Hammond noted. "And now you're all the way out here. Looking for Project Blue Book. Why? Where did you hear about? What do you know about it?"

"So you guys do know about it," Victoria tensed a little. There wasn't an accusatory tone in Hammond's voice, nothing hostile - in fact, he came off entirely friendly - but she didn't like the way a few of the other councilors were looking at her.

Plus, you don't ask 'where did you hear about it' for something innocuous.

"We know the name - and we know it's somewhere below Underlevel 11, but beyond that? Just a few isolated datapoints," another councillor noted.

Interesting.

"You guys know of Mr. House, and his unfortunate passing just before Second Hoover Dam?" Victoria kept her hands crossed in front of her chest, affecting an air of nonchalance, but she could grab her gun if she needed to.

Shoot Mitchell, try to hold these guys as hostages, if they decide to force an issue. Hopefully she wouldn't have to.

It would be a waste of a whole trip, if things ended like that.

"He was the roboticist who ran New Vegas before the NCR took it over."

"Pretty much," Victoria nodded at Hammond's comment, not wanting to go into the whole 'two hundred years old' part. "He had a plan - he was hoping to play the NCR and Legion off against each other, reactivate an old pre-war army of robots - hundreds, maybe even more than a thousand - not just the few dozen he had on the Strip - and carve a little empire out for himself with New Vegas. That didn't work out for him. After his death, I went through his files. He had a plan. Ambitious, probably too ambitious, but a plan. One of the first steps once he'd secure the Mojave was to send a few hundred of his Securitrons out here, with some human employees, and secure whatever Project Blue Book was."

"Why did he want it?"

"I have no idea. But he deemed it essential." Victoria shrugged. "I can only assume he didn't write it down because he didn't see the need to. He knew the plan. Given his ambitions, I got curious. I've wandered all over the West, up into Montana, down into Baja, because I'm curious. I want to know what's out there."

"What he did have were command codes to unlock the sealed doors to Project Blue Book. Which I transfered to my PipBoy," she tapped the device in question. She saw one of the councillors get a greedy look she recognized quite well in his eyes. "And if anyone tries to take my Pipboy from me, it will lock down as soon as it leaves my arm. And then you'd need my password. You could wipe it to use it for a new owner, but that's it. Plus... lots of people have tried to take things from me. Only one man ever succeeded and he's very, very dead." Sleeping with Benny hadn't even been all that satisfying before she'd snapped his neck at the end of it.

"Cheyenne isn't in the habit of stealing from people," Hammond assured her. "But equally... this mountain is our home. I don't suppose you'd just be willing to sell us the passcodes. We have quite a bit we can offer in trade."

"So I've seen," Victoria agreed, chuckling. "But no. I want to go down there myself, see what's down there. See what got House all hot and bothered. Sure, I'll admit the prospect of getting old world tech or rare items I could sell to a collector back in Vault City or Shady Sands or wherever was a bonus I was hoping for, but it's not why I crossed Legion territory."

Victoria dropped her hands to her side, then started to pace, gesticulating as she went on.

"I want to know what's down there. I'm happy to pay you just for the chance to see if the codes work." She was pretty sure they did. She knew House, before the war, had done work for the military. Lots of it. That had to be how he knew about Project Blue Book and had those codes, whatever it was.

"And if those codes do work, you guys can have the lion's share of any weapons or power armor or whatever is down there. I'm gonna want something for my trouble, if only so Veronica and Arcade have some Old World tech to play with, but I'm sure we can work something out." Victoria steepled her fingers and looked them over. "If you guys have gone 200 years without knowing what's down there, you have to be as curious as I am."

"I know I've always been," Hammond nodded. "I don't think you need to pay just to open the door." He looked around. "I move we allow Miss Victoria Fernandez to open the sealed door, if she can. If she does, she and her friends can go down and see what's there. We'll send Colonel Mitchell and three other members of the CDV down along with them. After we know what's down there, we can all decide how it can get divided and what we do with it."

He held up his hand slightly, resting his elbow on the table. "Do I have a second for the motion?" Another one of the councillors - the one who had asked her about killing Lanius - copied Hammond's gesture. "Okay, all in favor?" Hammond and the one who had seconded held up their hands, as did three other members. Two did not - the greedy councillor being one of them.

"The ayes have it, then," Hammond nodded. "Colonel Mitchell, pick your team and then take Victoria and her friends to the sealed door on underlevel 11. Let her have her weapons back as well. There's no telling what kind of defenses might have been left down there."

Colonel Mitchell nodded, "Understood Sir."

"Thank you for this," Victoria said with a slight nod to Hammond.

Cheyenne Mountain Underlevel 11

D Plus 0, Project Blue Book Rediscovery

Six Months After the NCR Victory At Second Hoover Dam

"This level's mostly just been where we store food in case of emergency," Mitchell explained as they approached the sealed door. He'd brought three people with him, as the Council had ordered. One Captain Sheppard, a Sergeant Wells and a Corporal Bosworth. There was a flashlight attached to the top of his gun.

"We don't even power the lights down here anymore, as a general rule," Mitchell added, as they made their way through the halls.

"Where do you get the power?" Victoria raised the brightness of her PipBoy screen a bit, making even better to light the way as she followed Mitchell - with Veronica, Arcade and Raul behind her.

"The base has pre-war fusion generators. Still going, though we have to be careful about using it. We've jerry-rigged smaller ones, using fissionable materials salvaged from cars or mini-nukes or the like, to supplement the big ones. Apparently this Project Blue Book had its own power supply."

They turned down another hallway. "It's just ahead," the Colonel explained. "Hammond showed me this when I took the job."

"I'm surprised this door is secret," Sheppard mused. "People come down here a lot."

"True, but there's nothing stored in this hallway," Mitchell said. "And no one stays down here longer than they have to." The light shined on a sealed blast door with 'C-11' emblazoned on in it peeling, faded white paint. Next to the door was a computer.

"Alright, here we go," Victoria walked up to the computer and hooked her pipboy to the computer, bringing up the saved command code - a long string of letters and numbers it would have been hell to try and enter manually - and set for input.

For a long moment, nothing happened, then a low grinding sound started, that increased in volume to a metallic screeching as the blast door in front of her started to lift, ancient gears and servos coming to life for the first time as the door moved after two centuries of neglect.

As the door lifted, the far side was revealed. As all their lights shone down the newly revealed speace, there was a short hallway and another elevator.

"You've got to be kidding me," Mitchell muttered. "Who wants to bet there'll be more hallway at the other end of this elevator?"

"Sucker's bet," Sheppard replied.

"That was the point," Mitchell countered. Victoria ignored them and approached the elevator. If Blue Book had its own power... she pushed the button and after a few moments, the elevator opened.

"Looks like there's only room for four people..." Victoria mused, stepping aside so everyone else could see what she meant. "Maybe five if we squeeze it." Ideally, it would be her and her friends that went down first, but that wasn't a viable solution, she knew. "How about this:" she started, thinking quickly. "Veronica, Mitchell, Sheppard and I go down first, then Raul, Arcade, Bosworth and Wells?"

Mitchell looked at his men, then nodded. "Makes sense." The four of them filed into the elevator and Victoria looked at the buttons. Numbers going from 12 to 27. No labels, but that made sense.

"Which floor?"

"Back in the days when NORAD lived up above, the more important stuff was lower down, so it would be safer from any attack," Mitchell suggested. "So let's go all the way down."

Victoria shrugged. Made as much sense as anything else. "Going down then," She pressed the button marked '27'. She nodded to Arcade, "Underlevel 27, meet you there."