The trek to ArcJet Systems was simple enough, despite having to put down both feral dogs and raiders along the way, although at one point Raina Queen and her pet synth paused to comment on how some place called Greygarden was just up the hill from where they were.
Before long they reached the building, a multistoried, blockish structure with few windows. It looked to be in reasonably good shape—good enough that it would not collapse on them, at least.
"There it is, ArcJet Systems. There shouldn't be any exterior security, so we'll head in through the front," Danse told them. "Listen up. We do this clean and quiet. No heroics and by the book. Understood?"
"Um, no, actually. Whatever book you're referring to, I haven't read it," Raina replied.
"And I'm not sure how you're gonna manage quiet when you're tromping around in power armor," the synth pointed out. "What with the hydraulics and the creaking, it ain't like you're going in on little cat feet."
"That's not—Look, just take it slowly and carefully," he explained. "We watch each other's backs. Don't go in guns blazing."
"I think we can manage that," Valentine said. "Ready, Raina?"
"Yes. What might we encounter? It can't be supermutants, or there would be meatbags all over the place. Raiders and Gunners would have fortified their perimeters and posted guards. That leaves ferals, insects, or other animals," the young woman asked.
"It could be any or all of those. Well observed, civilian," he said in praise. "Stay focused and check your fire. I don't want to be hit by stray bullets or bolts."
"This ain't exactly our first rodeo," Valentine said. "Lead on, MacDuff."
"MacDuff?" Danse asked, baffled. "Never mind. Follow me."
They entered to find a room strewn with the typical debris. His lips curled involuntarily as he looked around the lobby. "It was corporations like these that put the last nail in the coffin for mankind. They exploited technology for their own gains, pocketing the cash and ignoring the damage they'd done."
"Humankind," Raina emphasized, "and the coffin isn't buried yet. The rest I agree with. I suppose it's all part of the mentality which made sure the military had all it needed but the education system had go begging for funds."
"That—," Danse began to agree but then realized what she was saying. He clamped his jaws together and finished sweeping the lobby for hidden threats before stomping into the next room.
The synth detective was already there. "Hmm. The internal security system's already been taken out—and look. No blood, no bullet casings, no bodies—except for some stray parts that don't match with the prewar Protectrons. I don't think we're dealing with humans, ferals, or any of the local wildlife. I think the Institute's behind this—and from the smell of ozone, they've been here within the last ten or twenty minutes."
"You mean synths, don't you?" Danse asked the…thing in front of him. "I suppose you'd know. Which side are you going to be on when they appear?" He raised his weapon threateningly.
"Put it away," the synth told him, pulling out a cigarette and lighter. "The Institute threw me in the trash long before you took your first breath. Didn't even bother to scrap me for spare parts. I'm on the side of 'The three of us getting out of here in one piece.' If you're worried about how I'll deal with killing other synths, I have about as much problem with it as, say, you have killing other humans. If it's to protect others or myself, I won't lose a wink of sleep over it." He paused. "Not that it's an option."
How could a half-destroyed, old machine make him feel tongue-tied and dull-witted in comparison? It was just plain wrong, and caused him a great deal of consternation besides.
"Fine," Danse gritted out. "Let's move out."
As they moved through the rooms, he noted and commented on, "This place is a mess, but I still see a few pieces of salvage the Brotherhood might be interested in. After we're done here, I'll have to mark this place for sweep and retrieval. You can take what you need in the way of first-aid and ammunition, but clear anything else with me before you pocket it."
"All right," Raina said, amiably enough.
Before long they entered a lab which had a collapsed corridor blocking the other end and a locked security door leading off at a right angle. "Looks like a dead end. See if you can find a way to unlock that door. I'm going to reconnoiter the area."
"Suit yourself," the synth agreed, and the two of them set to searching the room.
"Ah, let me have a look at you," Valentine said when he reached a central desk. "Okay, that's not a bad piece of coding, but….Come to Papa!"
Danse heard the security door slide back its bolts. "Good job," he said, begrudgingly. "Now let's get moving—Synth ambush! Light them up!"
The open door revealed some three or four Gen 1 synths, skeletal and sinister, plus one of the more intelligent Gen 2s as group leader. The synths opened fire, and they did the same. The next fifteen or so minutes were all flashes of light from laser pistols, sparks and parts flying from damaged and dying synths, slowly but surely pushing the metallic monstrosities back, foot by foot, through the building.
Amid the chaos, there was little time or attention to spend on watching how his companions fought, but he noticed they worked together like a practiced unit, with King darting in to distract and immobilize an opponent to be picked off easily by one of the others. The synth was an excellent shot, but he wasn't above whaling on a foe with a baton. Raina, while good with Righteous Authority, went about bashing her enemies with….
"A shovel?" he asked when combat ceased. "You don't have anything better than that?"
"Why does everybody always say that?" she fumed. "It. Works. For. Me!"
Valentine laughed. "Maybe we ought to go raid that museum like Kleo suggested, sometime soon."
"As if I have time, with planting season around the corner. All right, all right. It's not that far from Goodneighbor. We can scope it out then."
Danse didn't like the intimacy between them. Not that it seemed improper by any stretch of the imagination, but even though he was beginning to have doubts about her potential as a member of the Brotherhood, surely this young woman should have some human friend willing to watch her back as she traveled. "All right. My intelligence indicates that the component we're after is in the next wing of the building. We're relatively secure here, so we'll pause to assess the state of our armor, equipment and weaponry before we move on. Reload your weapons, rehydrate yourself if necessary, and perform first aid if any is needed. In ten minutes, we're moving out."
"Understood," Raina nodded. She began checking King over for any wounds, and finding a long burn mark in his coat, began clearing away the scorched fur, looking for any injuries.
Danse took off his helmet and had a long drink of water, while the synth reloaded his gun and did something to his hand with a screwdriver. Seeing that Raina was fully occupied with her dog, he lowered his voice to speak to the detective.
"I made inquiries about you with a caravaneer," he said. "You're moderately well known throughout the Commonwealth."
"True," the synth acknowledged. "I'm flattered you took the time to ask." The yellow eyes flashed with wry lights for a moment.
"My concern was whether you could be trusted. I accept that you're fairly harmless, but there is one thing I would like to know. Why?"
"Why what? Why is the sky blue? Why does the world keep going round? Why do fools fall in love?" the synth quipped.
"Why do you travel with her? What do you get out of it? Does she pay you?"
"That's quite a lot of questions to answer in only ten minutes. First, no, she doesn't pay me, although we split any caps we come across, though I might let a few more fall into her wallet than mine. Second, as for why I do it—Raina Queen is about the most intelligent person you're ever likely to meet in the ordinary course of a day, but that's book smarts, not street smarts, even though she has good instincts. She's especially unworldly when it comes to people.
"Point in case, the other day we came across a woman standing outside a hardware store wailing about her sister being inside dying. On her own, Raina would have run right in and gotten shot, because it was all a hustle. The place was full of raiders, except for the cellar full of the corpses of people who had fallen for it. I got her to go in slow and careful, and we got them before they got us. She is as innocent as they come and I'm trying to inoculate her with some worldly wisdom before she gets badly hurt or dead. A lot of bad things can happen to a young person alone out there. I'm a detective, and I've seen the aftermath.
"Third, what's in it for me? Even if I didn't like her, I know helping her is the right thing to do. So that's what I'm doing." The synth gave the screwdriver a final turn and dropped it into a pocket. "Isn't it about time to move out?"
"Yes," Danse said. This synth…was unlike any other. That was a discussion they'd had the first time they had met, but it was brought home all the stronger now.
On the other side of the door was a vast test chamber, a rocket silo, used for testing the space drive the plant was working on. The stairs and landings up to the top, where the component was supposed to be, were badly damaged, with impassable sections missing. The whole structure was several stories high, and they had emerged onto a landing about one floor up. The metal flooring groaned like a dying ghoul as they stepped on it.
"Oh, hell," the synth said.
"What's wrong?" Danse asked even as Raina let out a moan.
"She's got a problem with heights. A bad problem. She gets vertigo standing on a chair to change a lightbulb. That's not an exaggeration, I've seen it happen." The synth took her hand, and said to her in a reassuring voice. "It's gonna be okay, kid. Keep hold of me, and I'll get you to the ground safe, okay?"
"Okay," she repeated.
"We're not even that high up," Danse pointed out. "The worst that might happen is that she'd twist her ankle."
"Doesn't matter. There's no rationality to this. C'mon, this way." With something like tenderness, the synth led the phobic girl to the elevator. "Damn. There's no power. Well, the stairs are here. Where the heck is this deep range transmitter thing, anyway?"
"It should be in the control room at the top of the tower," Danse replied.
"Then you better pray there's some way of powering up the elevator, because I don't know if you noticed, but the stairs are completely out in some places and none of us can fly."
"Then we keep on going down for now, and hope we can find something," he said, looking at how Raina was holding on to the synth for dear life. Well, there went any hope of her joining the Brotherhood. If she couldn't handle a metal gridwork landing which was only one story off the ground, she certainly couldn't ride in a vertibird or live on the Prydwen.
They went down the stairs, Raina so tense and rigid at first she looked ready to snap, but as they reached the turn and the lower steps she gradually relaxed.
"I never could handle heights, not even when I was very small," she muttered. "Then my sister died in a fall when some scaffolding collapsed—and recently I fell off a roof in Concord. Never mind that I didn't get hurt, I still fell."
"You should have been wearing power armor," Danse said. "No need to fear a fall when you're in power armor."
"I was wearing power armor. It didn't help."
They reached the ground. "There has to be a power backup somewhere. Scout the maintence area off the main chamber," Danse ordered. "I'll stay here and watch our backs."
"All right," the synth agreed. He and Raina went down the corridor which was lit with the rusty, sullen glow of emergency lights. He could hear them talking, as some acoustic quality of the huge area allowed sound to carry.
"Hey, look at this," said the synth.
"What is it? Obviously some kind of weapon, but what projectile does it use?"
"Hard to say—oh, I get it!" He heard a chugging, huffing sound. "It takes anything you wanna load into it, any old junk. This is an air compressor. Heh, you know what you're gonna use this for?"
They said in unison, "A seed gun!" and laughed.
"If he lets me keep it," Raina said. "which he probably won't."
"He might. I mean, this isn't exactly state of the art technology here. It's cobbled together from bits and pieces and held together with duct tape and glue. I'll carry it. Let's keep looking for the power switch."
A few minutes later, the power cut in—and then he was mobbed by synths. "I'm overwhelmed," he yelled. The next few minutes were again awash with fighting, in the dark this time with strobe-flashing bolts from laser guns, shock batons sizzling with electricity and the grating voices of the Gen 1 and 2s. Eventually they were the only ones left, two men—uh, no, one man, one synth, a woman and a dog, breathless and enervated, but alive and functional.
Once they had recovered fusion cells and ammo, they went into the elevator. It let them out on another grillwork landing, this one much higher up, and again Raina had to be helped along. They were only just in time to prevent the synths from making off with the deep range transmitter, but it was victory which mattered, after all. There were some other items of interest in the control room, but investigating it more thoroughly would best be left to the scribes.
As they had a look around, Danse stole a glance or two at Raina Queen. It was true, she was attractive, but if she wasn't Brotherhood material, there was no point in pursuing that attraction. His whole life was the Brotherhood, and besides, she had poor taste in friends and ill-informed opinions.
The synth did submit the odd weapon they had found, which was some kind of junk jet, and he wasted no time in telling them they could keep it. "I happened to overhear you," he told them, feeling generous. "What do you mean, you're going to use it as a seed gun?"
"Um—I didn't know you heard us. It would be for planting an entire field at a time," Raina explained. "There's a lot of backbreaking labor involved in planting."
"I suppose, but it seems a very inefficient distribution method. Half the seed could be wasted."
"You could be right—but I'd still like to try it." Raina stuck her chin out in defiance.
They took the elevator outside, and emerged into a world made glorious by a setting sun.
"We should be able to get back to the police station before dark," Danse commented. "You kept your part of the bargain, and I'm prepared to keep mine. As far as joining the Brotherhood of Steel goes—I won't hold you to that. You're a fine young woman, but a soldier can't have a weakness like a fear of heights."
"It's impolite to call attention to a person's shortcomings. We all have weaknesses of some kind," the detective pointed out, pulling out his cigarettes. "Even those of us who're certain we don't. You…might want to remember that, Paladin."
A/N: Next chapter, the return to General Atomics Galleria!
Thank you to all my readers, those who have just discovered Hiding In The Green, and those who have been here all along. BTW, I did a guest chapter for Guestman's fic s/11808925/1/The-Columbian-Wasteland set in the DC area a few years after the end of Fallout 3. In it, Elder Lyons is still alive, although in uncertain health, and his daughter and the Lone Wanderer, Alec Taggart, are married.
I quote: The Brotherhood is on the rise. A great discovery is made, one that could cement the Brotherhoods position as the dominant power on the East Coast. Teams are sent into the Columbian Wasteland to find new technology. What will they find? First story, so please be gentle. Rated T for safety. Takes place in an AU where Sarah Lyons doesn't die. Find out how.