Chapter 6: Secret Radar Service
Holodisk log. Resident 53-10385. January 27th, 2285.
After spending a day in "Dresden Heights" and another day dealing with radiation sickness, me and Cheryl had some work to do in order to remove the rest of the sickness. While I have zero idea what the hell I have to fix, it has been told to me the trip to where we're to go was short. We were even guaranteed transport, tools, and food for the job. Good. My feet still hurt from walking; the cold and my sickness kept my mind off the pain for the time being, but even this Reggie guy realized I needed what strength I had to work.
Speaking of my generous host, we ended up missing him this morning. He went out to take care of someone else's repair. Despite talking to the man face to face, I couldn't even see what he looked like. I was so screwed up. Man, I still have a headache. I almost wish Tylenol survived the damn war.
Our ride out of Brahmin Wood is approaching. This is Rep signing off.
Rep clicked a button on his Pip-Boy ending his log. Once again wearing his leather jacket and packing blanket poncho with his other standards, he also had a leather tool pouch on the opposite side of his pistol holster, and at his side on the ground was a decent size tool bag loaded with electronic tools.
He watched as the creature pulling a cart walked over the railroad tracks and approached the front of the old bar. The closer the beast got, the more Rep noticed the animal had two heads. The driver of the cart pulled on the reins signaling the animal to stop. "Whoa," the driver said, pulling the straps, the animal's two heads both chortling in response.
As the cart finally stopped the driver – who was decked out in combat armor covered in small animal pelts lashed together with leather belts and buckles – raised his combat goggles and looked down at the Vault Dweller, "Hey there! Reggie said you needed a lift. Uh... Hello?" Rep was fixated with the twin-headed animal's obvious abnormality. There was a sudden ear-piercing whistle that suddenly scared Rep's attention to the source – the driver, "The hell, son, you never seen a brahmin before?"
After briefly glancing at the animal again Rep looked back up to the driver, "Would you believe me if I said, 'no'?"
"Yeah, Reggie said you were a Vault Dweller," the man chuckled slightly, "That about confirms that." The man looked toward the door of the bar and looked a short distance around, "I was told there were two of you."
"Yeah, Cheryl's still inside," the man in the jumpsuit said, picking up the tool bag. "Not sure why she's taking so long."
The driver sighed, "Cheryl, huh? Poor kid's most likely sleeping it off."
"Hmmm," Rep said, nodding his head. Suddenly a thought occurred to him, "Wait, how'd you know she was drinking?"
"When hasn't she?" Rep tilted his head to the side telegraphing that he didn't understand. The man on the cart sighed again, his breath visible in the winter air, "She's been that way since she first wandered into Brahmin Wood. It was said it was because her grandfath..." he cut himself off when the door to the bar opened.
Rep turned to find the female wastelander wearing a pair of authority glasses while wearing the packing blanket she wore days before around her like an actual blanket. Her hair was a mess and her walking was staggered. She closed the door behind her as she stumbled her way toward the cart, tripping over herself in the snow several times.
"Well," Rep spoke sarcastically, "good morning, sunshine."
She walked her way to the back of the cart as she slurred out, "Wake me when we get there. One second before and I'll bust your kneecaps." She crawled into the back and covered her body with the blanket.
"Yes, I'm doing very well," the Engineer's words dripped with sarcasm, "Thanks for asking." He placed the tool bag beside the driver then climbed on the cart's bench beside the other man. The man snapped the reins, "Yah!" The cart jerked a bit then smoothly made its way north through Downtown Brahmin Wood.
"By the way," the man freed one of his hands to extend, "my name's Moreno." Rep took the man's hand in turn, "Rep." The two shook hands then turned back to the broken snow-covered street as Rep broke the short-lived silence, "So, what's the story with this place?"
"Brahmin Wood?" the man rhetorically asked, "Well, before the war, it was some small town called, 'Tinley Park.' One of the biggest places around here was the Kandewit plant just west of here."
"Yeah, saw that coming up here. What's that place about?"
"Not sure. Anyone that's gone inside never comes back. Anyway, after the war the people in the area came here to start rebuilding, but it was terrible. We had a huge Raider problem; every time we harvested crops, they stole everything; whenever we got Brahmin herds, they'd slaughter them. Everything changed when the Brotherhood arrived."
"Who or what is the Brotherhood?"
The cart rounded a bend in the road, a large forest surrounding them. Despite the land around the area being flat and barren the further north they traveled the greener the land became. Rep had only seen such foliage in books, microfiche, and movies in the entertainment center on the Entertainertron... when it worked, that is.
Up ahead of them, Rep saw a clearing just to the right of the old road. It looked like the clearing was an open field, but when they got closer he saw it was an old, very large parking lot. Turning into the parking lot there was a building behind a fence made up of old destroyed cars and sheets of rusted corrugated metal. Behind the building was a large scaffold-like tower which had a spinning parabolic metal grid. The device's color and shape reminded Rep of an orange peel.
"I get the feeling I know what I'm gonna be fixing," the Engineer took off his Pre-War hat and ran his hand over his short blonde hair, "Goddamnit, I thought I was gonna fix a toaster or something. Jesus, this place sucks!" "Welcome to the wasteland, man," Moreno quipped as Rep slipped his hat back on as two robots approached them from the fence.
Wait, they weren't robots. They moved too articulately to be such. One approached Rep's side of the truck as the metal-clad humanoid spoke through an intercom installed in the head in a female voice, "State your name and your business, local."
"Uh..." the headpiece had a very unusual design; it was oblong going from the chin section to the base of the skull at the top of the neck and had a set of horns that protruded from the location of the ears. Large shoulders made up the top half of the torso piece as the type of polymer under armor helped affix metal plates in place throughout the structure. There was a human inside this thing, and she was growing impatient, "I said: Name and business."
"At ease, Initiate," Moreno said to the metal-suited woman. "He's here to repair the radar." The woman scoffed, "Him? Where's Reggie?"
"He had more urgent stuff to do. He sent him."
"I'm Rep," he introduced himself, "I'm an... Engineer. I'm working on a business venture with him."
"Engineer, huh?" the voice behind the mask was skeptical, "If you're an engineer, what's the proper modulation of a plasma rifle's Gauss coil?"
Without missing a beat, "That depends. Plasma discharge stabilizers can operate at higher frequencies depending how far away the main electromagnetic plasma collider is from said stabilizer. As a rule of thumb, plasma can hold between frequency modulations of 640 GHz and 1240 GHz." There was a silence as everyone looked at Rep. Cheryl even climbed out of the back of the cart and raised her sunglasses as she hung over the back of the bench to look at him.
Moreno was first to say something, "What in the hell did you just say?"
"Actually," the iron-clad woman said, her voice intoning she was both surprised and impressed, "he's right." She turned to the fence, a blue symbol of a sword with sprout wings superimposed over a circle containing three interlocked cogs. She yelled to the other side, "Open the gate!" A section of the fence made up of the steel sheets opened up, splitting the painted symbol into two halves as a gateway cleared away. The steel adorned woman turned back to the cart and waved them through, "Welcome to the Brotherhood of Steel's Gaelic Outpost. Talk to Scribe Rodriguez, he's waiting inside."
Once inside the fence Rep saw a coach gate hanging in front of a large single-story building. On the top of the coach gate was an old back lit sign that read, "Gaelic Park," albeit with missing sections of the sign. Under the coach gate sat three very old and run down Humvees with the same symbol found on the fence on the doors of the vehicles. The cart with all three visitors passed under the porte-cochere and parked in an open space closest to the door.
Moreno climbed out first and lashed the Brahmin to an old sign post leaving Rep to check over his tools and follow suit. After making sure he had all his tools and loading his belt with the most needed of the tools, Rep wandered to the bed of the car to retrieve Cheryl's drunken corpse from the back, "Okay, Mademoiselle Boozehound, time to get up." He slapped the soles of her boots which were sticking out of the back of the cart.
She moaned as the boots shuffled under the blanket, "Five more minutes, mishomis." Her voice was almost childlike in tone; innocent.
Rep wasn't having it, "We ain't got time for this shit." He grabbed the blanket off her, picked up a handful of snow, climbed into the bed and shoved the snow down the front of her jacket. Rep climbed down just as she jumped from the cold sensation going down the front of her body. She yelped as she stuck her hands down her front to get the cold melting ice ball only to have her jacket sleeves get caught on her bandoleer.
"Goddamn you, you fucking cave loitering cock sucker!" she swore out as she jumped out of the cart and opened her jacket. The lump of snow dropped out bit by bit causing her to just rip the jacket, her armor, and her bandoleer off to get all the ice off her, exposing the very curvaceous shape of the upper part of her body; it was only clad in a tank top. The cold air and wet nature of her clothes caused her skin to... react, for lack of a more appropriate term. Rep couldn't help but look at Cheryl's fairly large chest. Cheryl finally brushed off the rest of the snow and looked up to find the engineer looking at her assets. She slowly lowered her sunglasses down the bridge of her nose to look over the frames, "You like what you see, pervert?" she asked in a venomous tone.
"I'll be honest," the Vault Dweller said looking her up and down, "I wasn't expecting to see something this glorious today." Cheryl rolled her eyes as she walked toward the main entrance in a disgusted huff, grabbing her discarded items as she did. He called out after her, "If it makes you feel better, I've rarely seen a woman with a body like yours at home." She slowed her pace a bit and slightly turned back to look at him. She shot him a dirty look and snapped her jacket on as she scoffed and shook her head. She turned back to the building entrance and smirked a bit to herself.
Moreno had finished placing feed bags on both of the brahmin's heads and walked up beside the Vault Dweller who still stood there in bemusement to the outcome of his actions, "Getting friendly with her, huh?"
"Pfft," Rep blew a raspberry, "she fucking hates me."
"I wouldn't be so sure," the man in combat armor patted him on the shoulder, "Cheryl is different. Hell, from what Reggie told me last night she's taken a real shine to you," he started walking toward the door. A wave of confusion came over Rep as he picked up the tool bag and followed suit.
Inside the building, Rep, Cheryl, and Moreno walked around in what looked like an old ballroom filled with long tables covered with various mechanical parts. The room was lit with multiple halogen work lights powered by fission batteries. Makeshift privacy dividers were erected around the room to get a semblance of organization and departmentalization. Several people walked the room going from table to table passing along clipboards, parts, or holotapes looking as though they were hard at work finding an answer to something.
Wearing red robes, the people walking the room had all their attention focused on their individual projects completely ignoring the three newcomers in the room; so much so, even when Rep tried to flag someone down they treated him as though he was wearing a Stealth Boy, "Hey, can you tell me... Hey, I'm looking for a Scribe named... Will somebody please help me?"
A glass shattering whistle erupted from the front of the room. Rep looked back to find Moreno was once again the source of the noise. Cheryl stood beside him with her hands to her ears. When Moreno stopped, Cheryl punched him in the arm repeatedly in anger, "What the fuck! Don't do that again!" "Sorry," he said unapologetically, "I forgot your raging alcoholism."
As the two bickered, Rep shook his head and turned to find every single person in the room was turned toward him. An uncomfortable air filled the room as everyone's eyes fell on the Vault Engineer. "Hi," he said, plastering an awkward smile on his face. He gave a nervous chuckle, "Uh... Scribe Rodriguez?"
