Begin Recording

Dinner With Friends

Recording by Scribe Ellison

We lounged around for a while; Deacon loaded his holotape into Colter's terminal and read out the interesting bits while I lay around recovering and commenting.

"There's a lot on here about 'the one rule' and that rule is 'don't get caught'"

"Well that's encouraging." I said from my spot on Colter's sofa. "Don't get caught doing what?"

"Murdering members of the other gangs, mostly. Not a lot that's against the rules for raiders. You saw how they treat each other, and all the chems they take."

"Hey, how do you think Nisha could see through that helmet?"

"You couldn't guess? It was obvious!"

"It was not!" I looked for something nondangerous to throw at him. "Tell me!"

Deacon finished laughing at me and said, "The front, the part over her eyes, isn't metal. It's part of the dome from a surveillance camera. She's painted it a little to look like metal but it's black glass. She probably can't see all that well, but it's worth it to be terrifying."

I thought back. In the dark inside the mountain I could've mistaken glass for polished metal. That could be right. My only other guess was that maybe Nisha was blind anyway and navigated by sound.

After a while Deacon offered to go to the market and get dinner and asked if he could bring back a guest.

"Doc Mackenzie?"

"Sierra. I bet she's wandering around like a lost brahmin calf down there. And I'd like to learn more about the state of Capital Wasteland than we get from our people."

I waved a hand over the back of the sofa, "Bring back whoever you want as long as I don't have to stand up. Least injured person cooks."

"That a Minutemen rule, General?"

"I'm proposing it as soon as I get back."

Deacon returned with fresh brahmaluff steaks, mutfruit, and cotton candy bites. "Prewar park food. They're basically solid sugar."

Sierra crunched one, "They're delightful!"

"They're awful." was Deacon's opinion.

I tried one. My teeth curdled. "All yours, Sierra."

And we had a delightful dinner. Discussion went from brahmaluff steaks versus brahmin steaks to the wonders of Nuka-cola to travel destinations in the Capital Wasteland. Of course Sierra's idea of travel destinations was, "Well there's the Nuka-cola bottling plant, the crashed delivery truck on the overpass, the town of Underworld—it's full of ghouls but they're perfectly nice and they helped me find some things for my museum! And Megaton, where most of the people live including my friend the hero of the wasteland! He's nice, he brought me some quantums!"

I was happy to let her chatter while I inhaled my dinner with the appetite of someone doing a lot of healing on stimpacks. Deacon fried me up a second steak halfway through eating his own dinner, which was so sweet of him. Then we managed between us to steer Sierra around to the question of current events in the Capital Wasteland.

"Well I guess things got a little tougher after the Brotherhood packed up their paladins and flew away. The ones who stayed are trying to fight raiders and things but I don't think they have a lot of power armor. I have to take time away from the museum to help build defenses for Girdershade!"

I had a moment thinking how… interesting it would be to have Sierra in Sanctuary.

Deacon asked, "Are there any organized slavers again? And chance they're who these raiders are selling to?"

"I did hear about that! Slavers moved back into Paradise Falls and the hero can't kick them out again all by himself without his friends from the Lyons Pride. It's such a shame after all their hard work!"

Deacon sighed and looked down at his plate. "Everything we've heard from everyone says the Capital Wasteland would be doing a whole lot better today if Sara Lyons and her team hadn't been killed… but that was a long time ago and we're here now. Why don't we look at your notes on the Cappy contest?"

So Deacon saved the conversation into descending into another rehash of the Brotherhood as a problem, because much as I like some individual members it would be nice if the Brotherhood as a whole would go back to the Capital Wasteland and keep their own house in order.

Sierra was delighted to see our map, "Ooh! It's the park! This is a much better map than the one I've got!" She unfolded her map, a brightly colored cartoonish picture of the park that must have been for tourists before the war. Sierra told us all the Cappy clues from memory and told us what she'd seen peeking through the gates to the other parks. To me relief the raiders kept chasing Sierra back to the market when she tried to get anywhere so she hadn't wandered into anywhere dangerous yet. "But I know all about the parks! I'll tell you all about them, and maybe I can tag along with you when you go in!"

Deacon said, "Sure, maybe." with a good imitation of enthusiasm.