Chapter Four
The Loner' Vault
2277,
"Three long arse days and nights later, no way of contacting anyone back home, I arrived here and this right here is a lost cause so I'll be making my way over to the Loner' Vault now, nice to meet you, good luck in the afterlife" Radar said
"Woe, woe hey! You can't just blow us up!" The Vault Dweller said
"Well he's not moving from that bomb, how am I supposed to get around it tell me?" Radar said in question, "You reckon you're a smart boy, in fact with all the "You're welcomes" you've been firing around you seem to think you're it round here, I answered your question, I was meerly giving you a chance to save yourself but if you won't see sense you're no use to me"
Dogmeat had just joined Radar and was sniffing the Vault Dweller,
"If I let you blow up Megaton..." He began
Dogmeat gave her a look to say he liked this boy so Radar sighed,
"I want to bury that bomb! Either this city and it's occupants go to hell with it, they move out of my damn way or I take that stupid bomb and move it into a giant hole and the third option is out right now, I've been here three days and that idiot hasn't left that bomb for one second!" Radar scolded
The Vault Dweller felt stupid now,
"Oh...you want to move the bomb out of here" He said
"At last" She said
Dogmeat gave a sound as if to say "You're slow"
"That dog of yours has an attitude" He said with a point
"He's called Dogmeat, my Uncle' fault, he has the Puppy Perk because his last owner was a soldier"
"I had a Dogmeat...but I didn't have a Puppy Perk" The Vault Dweller said
Dogmeat put his paws on his legs and then jumped down and barked with a look at Radar,
"No Dogmeat, he isn't a soldier" Radar said, then to the Vault Dweller she added, "I have the Animal Friend Perk, it's supposed to prevent animal attack but mine is faulty, I can however understand the emotion of a pack animal or my own animal...he has some interesting dreams" Dogmeat gave her an embarrassed look, which made the Vault Dwellwer laugh,
"I didn't level up fast enough to get the Puppy Perk...he was got a mutant"
"Had you been the child of a soldier you would have, but still, you got to a fairly substantial XP by the time you cleansed that water with your father, do you want to come with me? Two human heads would be better than one, maybe we could find a way to get that man from his precious Atom Bomb yet"
The Vault Dweller smiled,
"Sure"
"I'm not marrying you" She said
"Yet" He grinned, she pulled the rifle out on him, "Message recieved" he said with a bite of the lip,
"Move your butt Vault Dweller" She called back
"I have a name" He replied
Radar, the Vault Dweller and Dogmeat made their way to the school a short distance from Megaton. They found a route in and climbed over dead raders littering the corridors. Radar seemed to know where she needed to go,
"I found a basement and wires and rad roaches but I didn't find an entrance to a Vault" The Vault Dweller said
"You were looking in the wrong place" Radar said before entering a classroom, "It'd be rude of me not to ask you for your name now"
"It's Matt" He said
"There's something creepy about a post War classroom and it's books and pencils still lying about the place" Radar said
"Never really thought about it" Matt said honestly, "I had one thing on my mind the last time I was here, find caps to barter with, weapons and my father"
"A school? You went to a school to find money...and weapons?" Radar asked astonished, "A school that has money? Wow, thats a novelty, wouldn't get that in the UK"
"Come on it can't have been that bad"
"It's free to send your child there but with all the tests they have year in year out you're looking at 200 caps a year for revision books and test papers, donations are also expected for tissue, for soap, to buy the food, to eat said food, for toys, for gym equipment, for teachers wages even, trips to the library will cost the parent and God help you if they went on a mandatory trip to another country" Radar said,
All this time she was working on the black board, trying to find the swtich to reveal a hidden staircase. Matt stood back in shock and Dogmeat growled,
"What's he sencing?" He asked Radar
"Electricity, a change in frequency, story goes this loner built synths from the walls and wires but if Vault Tech were watching they took a long time to manipulate the frequency to turn them against the loner. Something changed and only recently, be ready" Radar said,
They descended the staircase to an elevator shaft.
Radar called up the elevator to find two synths. They were slow to activate but they were activating. Dogmeat looked up and barked,
Radar fired a granade over the metal wall so it bounced and caused part of the ceiling to cave in on the synths as they fired beams at her and Matt,
Matt then watched in shock as she climbed the wall and down before ripping the wires out of the now trapped synths and shut them down,
"You're crazy do you know that?!" Matt exclaimed
Radar put the wires in a pocket in her combats,
"These could come in handy" Radar said, then to Matt she added, "What're you standing there for climb over?"
Matt did as he was told and then activated the elevator, Radar then stopped it,
"Do you have a death wish?" She said in question, "Check the way is clear first"
He and Radar got down on the ground to pier over and at the bottom of the shaft,
Waiting for them in a massive clearing were two more synths.
Radar and Matt quietly shifted back,
"How're we getting past them?" Matt said, "I cleared out Vault Tech"
"You say "You're welcome" one more time" Radar threatened, "Clearly they have more or people working undercover, we can't use these guns that's for sure"
Dogmeat pawed at Radar to get Radar' attention, he scratched the synth,
"Oh your dog is a genus" Matt said,
"We can use their guns, and hopefully the synths won't fire back, they'll think there's something wrong with these two, their wiring, whoever's controlling them down there will just let them destroy each other"
"They have to think we're toast already...whatever that is"
Radar just looked at him
"You really did come down in the last shower didn't you?"
If she were honest Radar thought this a long shot but she and Matt retrieved the guns, used the synths behind them to hide, took aim and shot at the synths below until they both blew apart,
"Woe! That's awesome!"
Radar took the elevator down to the bottom, and the clearing. She opened the door, synth gun still in hand and panned it round, Matt stood with his back to her and did the same while Dogmeat sniffed at the bottom of three doors available to them,
He growled and pawed at the last one,
"Hmm, we need to find the Loner, if he's still alive he'll be hiding and if we can get to the overseer' office and hack into the terminal there we'll be able to find anyone else living in the vault" Radar said, she chose the door furthest away but the pitboy wouldn't work, "It's not American, you do it"
Matt used his pitboy to open the door then closed it again once they were in the corridor beyond it.
The Vault walls were rust coloured and the ceiling was low, there were windows looking in on rooms with empty pods in them.
Radar caught sight of a red dot moving across the wall, coming from a window on the otherside and she brought Matt down to the floor,
"Guards" She said quietly
"Why's this set out like a normal vault if only one person was meant to live here?" He said
"He'd have gotten suspicious if there wasn't more than one communal area or sleeping space" She replied, "Now how are we getting past that?" She asked as to her great anoyance the guard marched out of the room to the left of them
Radar rolled onto Matt and ducked as the guard shot in her direction,
"You will stand down!" It called,
"Door! Door! Door!" She yelled shooting at the guard and shoving Matt into the door leading to the pods,
"How's that going to help? And Ouch!" He yelled
Radar moved out of the way and shoved Matt to safety as the guard shot again and the door opened, she then grabbed Matt into the room and used him to shut the door to the room with the pods in it, they then slumped to the floor.
Radar took a few seconds and then shot the mechanism on the wall left of the door to activate the bullet and bomb proof window guard,
"Right let's think about this here" Radar said getting up off the floor, "You're welcome by the way" She added before smiling at Matt,
Matt laughed and coughed a little before accepting her help to get up off the floor,
"I see if I stay with you I'm in for a few bruises"
"To your body too" She said, then as he shook his head she added, "OK, so, we have three, possibly four rooms in this section of the vault, three sections that interlink most likely so make that 12 rooms, each room with 5 guards, 60 guards on each floor, they could be anywhere. There should be a terminal around here somewhere that we can hack. Shut the guards down each level so we can do a propper search"
"What about the synths?"
"We use the guards armour to trick them" Radar said
"Or make them work for us" Matt said
"Sure, it'd have to be done via each individual pod so if we do that to the five in here, we'll have five on this floor on our side if we and they are in the same space" Radar said
Matt walked over to the terminal at the end of the room,
"This being here makes no sense" He commented as he tried to hack the system,
"It makes perfect sence, if the Loner realised he was being set up he'd have bolted and taken his chances with the radiaton outside, by seeing these terminals and these pods and living spaces he'd feel comforted and believe there'd be more, he was the first to arrive. They could even have had decoys stand in, pretending to be Vault Dwellers, the Vaults where the experiments were being held were interlinked so they could escape, then they'd have set off bombs to cave in entrances so they couldn't be followed back to Vault Tech HQ"
"I didn't see...right, more than one HQ, I'm in, there are two options here"
"I can read" She replied, "Show me the map to the overseer' office real quick" Matt made this appear on the screen of his pit boy, "OK so you can either make the guards in one area work for us at a time or send them back to their pods and if you do that they will kill us" Matt nodded his head, "We need to be in that corridor Dogmeat was pawing at...hang on, where is Dogmeat?"
Dogmeat came out of a side room with a box in his mouth, he dropped this at their feet to reveal a number of stealth boys,
"Oh you cleaver dog" Matt said, taking one, "Two each will get us safely to the overseers office"
"What about Dogmeat? They won't work for an animal, they'll attack him" Radar asked concerned
"He survived that out there, something tells me this pup can handle his own affairs" Matt said
Matt was right about Dogmeat, when confronted by a guard he bit it's foot to make it fall and then clawed and pawed at it until it's head came off or the wires were exposed and he ripped them out with his teeth so it couldn't get up again.
He was right about the number of stealth boys they'd need too but they did end up in a battle against guards that were from another floor.
Dogmeat aided where he could.
One floor above the overseer' office Dogmeat pulled at some wires and shut off all power to that floor, then using Matt' pitboy they were able to navigate around the guards not on their side and down to the floor of the overseer' office.
They snuck around and into the overseer' office, shutting the door behind them and blacking out the window. Then while Matt got to work on the terminal Radar took a look around the place, ammo stempacks, anything that might help them,
Just as Radar turned from rummaging through a desk Matt sat back and sighed,
"I've been locked out of the terminal"
Radar went over to it,
"You need a password" She said,
All of a sudden they heard two male voices outside and Dogmeat crept up to the door, sniffed, growled and backed up.
As the door opened Radar and Matt had their rifles aimed but she quickly lowered hers and held out her hand to stop Matt,
"You left me!" It was her Uncle and her father. He broke into a grin, "I am so frickin proud of you!" He grabbed her for a hug and then looked at Dogmeat with suspicion, "Dogmeat" Then he smiled, "Good dog"
Dogmeat turned his nose up at him and Radar' father laughed,
"He's something else alright" Her father said, then to Radar he added, "So are you"
They shared a hug and she grinned,
"I taught Dogmeat a new trick you wanna see it?" Radar asked'
"Impress me" Her Uncle said
Radar turned on some music and danced with Dogmeat,
Matt fell about laughing,
"Boom, boom, boom, let me here you say "Way-oh""
Radar stopped the music and Dogmeat jumped down, she gave him and treat and he sat down,
"We're locked out of the terminal, we were trying to find the loner" Radar said seriously
"I have the password for it but if you didn't see him and we didn't it can only mean one thing"
"Vault Tech has him" Matt nodded