The Distress Signal

For all that Ellen had been telling people at Milliways that her Vault was 'outside of where Arlington used to be', it seemed that the boundaries of the old city were surprisingly far away. Oh, sure, in a straight line it didn't look like much, but having to clamber over piles and piles of centuries-old rubble added to the distance, and the raiders that cropped up whenever she thought she could let her guard down just made things worse. More than once she considered finding a door to get herself to Milliways for help, but some burst of gunfire, or some gurgling wail of a half-rotted ghoul gone mad, inevitably interrupted her train of thought.

Eventually, though, she came to a stop on the remains of what had once been a sunken road. There'd been two raiders, armed with shotguns and stinking of God only knew what chems; they were gone now. Only corpses and quiet remained. She sagged back against one of the canyonlike walls that flanked the roadbed and closed her eyes a moment.

There was no click of a cocking gun, no patter of irradiated footsteps. No buzzing of bloatflies or skittering of radroaches, no clickity noises as the joints of giant ant legs slid over one another, no shuffling molerat steps or barking of feral dogs. Not even the thud of great green mutant feet could be heard in the quiet of that manmade valley.

It was creepy as hell. Ellen could feel the edges of her old fear of open spaces creeping back in that silence. Not much liking the prospect, she quickly opened her eyes and started fiddling with her Pip-Boy. She'd found that it picked up the same patriotic music and recorded speeches the Weixing-looking robots broadcast, and under the right conditions, it sometimes picked up Galaxy News Radio. Either one, she felt, would be welcome just now.

"This is a high priority message. Backup is needed at our location. Any personnel listening on this frequency, please report at once..."

.... that wasn't Galaxy News Radio. That wasn't even Three Dog's voice. Ellen froze, but there was no further signal, only faint open-channel static. She'd just begun to reach for the tuning dial again when the same man's voice spoke again, crackly and urgent sounding: "This is defender Morrill. Any outcasts listening on this frequency, report to sector 7B- Bailey's Crossroads. This is a high priority message..."

Where Bailey's Crossroads was, she didn't know. On the other hand, she'd been learning to triangulate radio signals so that she could eventually track Three Dog down. Whoever this Morrill was, it sounded like he was in danger. And, well... given what the Overseer had said, she was pretty sure she qualified as outcast.

The library could wait. Ellen pushed herself away from the wall and started off at a trot.

Aiding the Outcasts

Bailey's Crossroads Metro Station smelled. Ellen had grown accustomed to stale air and mold-must by now, but this place had an active stench about it. It must have been the mad ghouls that lived there, she decided. Marigold Station hadn't had that vaguely rotten air to it, even with the ant colony below. Here? Here she'd been attacked by emaciated, maddened ghouls wearing little more than scraps of what she could only pray were brahmin skin almost as soon as she set foot inside- and, frankly, their reek lingered even after they fell. The acrid whiff of shotgun fire wasn't enough to block it out. Suppressing the urge to gag, she headed for the one light source in the station: an access tunnel leading upwards and away from the platform.

The light grew brighter as the tunnel curved to the left. Ellen caught sight of the rusted-in-place remains of an escalator at the same moment the sound of gunfire reached her. There was a battle raging up above, by the sound of it. She crept forward as carefully as she dared, shotgun at the ready, but there was nothing to be seen from that far down. No help for it but to clamber up the escalator, moving carefully and slowly.

It would have been nice to say that she got a glimpse of the battle, but that would have required the figure at the very top of the escalator to be standing somewhere else. It was human, at least- well, she assumed it was, as it was shorter than any mutant she'd seen. And mutants didn't wear full black-and-red body armor anyway, not that she knew-

The armored figure spun around surprisingly quickly for someone toting the weight of a minigun. "You got a death wish, walking through a war zone?" it snapped, the black eye-slits of its full-face helmet fixed on her. It was the voice from the distress call. Ellen blinked and tried to answer, but nothing came out. "Listen, local, if you want to be of use, help us clear the mutants between here and our base camp. If not, stay the hell out of our way!"

Without further ado the armored man turned and bolted, shouting, "Outcasts! On me!" Ellen had just enough time to see an open courtyard ringed by wrecks and rubble before the mutants started to pour in from all directions and other armored figures opened fire.

I don't know about these people, Lord, but I could sure use a little help just now, she thought before launching herself into the fray.

---

Ellen leaned against the nearest wall and mightily tried not to be sick. The Outcasts- the men in armor- hadn't been kidding about the war zone. There'd been mutants, all right- so many mutants- and they'd had one of those things with them, with the tongues. She could about deal with blood by now, and the worse things that wound up spraying everywhere in a gunfight, but turning from taking down a mutant at a distance and finding that tongue thing all but on top of her... well, it was good she had fast reflexes, that was all. But that just meant she wound up with tongue monster parts all over her chestplate a moment later, and-

"All right, local," said Morrill's voice from not far away. "Mind explaining what you're doing here?"

Without opening her eyes (she'd have to look down at the yuk that thing had left), Ellen murmured, "I picked up your radio signal and thought I had better come lend a hand."

"You're kidding."

"No, sir, I'm not."

"How the hell did you hear my signal?" Ellen lifted her eyes carefully to the armored figure; she thought there was something skeptical to its stance. "It's not broadcast on a standard frequency- oh, I see. you've got one of those wrist-mounted computers. Isn't that interesting."

Wrist-mounted what? Ellen thought, and suddenly realized Morrill must have seen her Pip-Boy. She lifted her left arm enough for him to see it better, and nodded.

"Fancy that," said Morrill dryly. "Listen, kid, maybe you can help us out. We've been looking for someone like you. Why don't you head inside and talk to Protector McGraw? I'll radio ahead and let him know you're coming."

"Um, what?" Ellen said, but Morrill had stepped away- and two other armored figures had closed in behind him. She didn't much like the look of their guns, or the way they were standing; she took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and started in the direction Morrill had indicated. She could still hear the sound of his voice as she went:

"Morrill calling. Yeah, we took care of it. Listen, I'm sending down a local. You'll wanna talk to this one. .... .... yeah, exactly. Morrill out."

There was a lift platform set into an outer wall of one of the half-wrecked buildings, with an armored figure holding a laser rifle standing guard over it. The figure's head turned in silence as Ellen approached, and continued to watch as she tremulously pushed the control button and the platform started its downward journey.

It didn't seem like a very good sign.

---

Somewhere around the second or third floor down from the surface, Ellen began to hear voices coming up from below:

"All I'm saying is, why can't we just ice the chick and use the computers ourselves?"

"McGraw gave orders. It's that simple."

"Come on, man. how long you going to let McGraw screw us over like this?"

She didn't like the sound of that at all, but before she had time to do more than ready her shotgun, the lift ground to a halt at a huge steel door. It slid aside to reveal two more armored figures. The helmeted one merely watched her, but the other- a dark-skinned man whose hair was cropped close to his scalp- stepped forward. "All right, you," he snapped, and hefted his minigun. "Keep your weapons holstered, your hands to yourself, and your mouth shut. Follow me."

"... uh," Ellen said weakly. "Where to?"

"The command room. Don't try anything stupid." He turned on one heel and stalked off immediately, leaving Ellen to think that the only stupid thing she could think of right now was having gotten involved in this in the first place. Not much liking her chances if she tried to bolt, she had no real choice but to follow him.

At least it was an interesting passage. The building, whatever it had been once, was well-lit and maintained. Electrical cables ran everywhere, with light brighter than Vault lighting spilling down from every ceiling. Through this side door or that, she could make out computers, glass maps, supply stashes, and other things she couldn't even name. One wall they passed was decorated with a great black flag, on which a blood-red sword had been superimposed over an equally red eight-toothed gear. She wanted to ask what it was- what all of it was- but the man didn't seem the sort to answer questions.

Just as she was steeling herself to speak anyway, he pushed a door open and called out, "Sir, here she is, like you asked."

"Thanks, Sibley," came a man's voice from inside what Ellen assumed was the command room. She glanced to her erstwhile companion, but he only gestured irritably to proceed without him. A redheaded, short-haired man in the same red and black armor as Sibley was the only other occupant, save perhaps for the computer terminals. He raised a hand as Ellen approached. "So you're the one Morrill sent down," he said. "I'll be perfectly honest- normally I'd about trust a Wastelander to shine my power armor, and even that's pushing it."

Who are you people, anyway? Ellen thought, but bit her tongue.

"But you do have that computer there on your wrist," the man- McGraw, she assumed- mused. "Hmph. Looks like Morrill made the right call. Maybe you can be useful after all."

He raised his eyebrows meaningfully at Ellen; she repressed the urge to answer Sure, who wouldn't want to help out the surly guys in scary armor?. Instead she said, carefully, "So I have something you want-" She lifted her left arm and touched her Pip-Boy. "And you need my help because of that. All right, what's the deal?"

McGraw almost laughed. "So you do have half a brain," he said. "That's good. I'll keep it simple- I need you, and I need that computer of yours. You help me out, and I'll do what I can to help you. This isn't an offer the Outcasts extend to just anyone, so you really should think carefully about it."

That was possibly the most courteous thing she'd heard since that stupid broadcast. Hoping for some conversational opening, Ellen said, "Well, what do you want me to do?"

McGraw gestured at a nearby terminal. "The local records indicate there's some high-value tech in this base, but we can't get to it. The armory is sealed by a blast door and we can't get it open. We're pretty sure anyone who completes the facility's VR simulation program will gain access, but the sim pod requires a certain interface. Unfortunately, we don't have one. You do, right there on your wrist. I need you to go into the simulator and complete the program, which will unlock the armory. You'll get a share of the gear, of course."

Ellen blinked a few times. Blast doors she understood, and computer programs to some degree, but what was 'VR'? Or a 'sim pod', for that matter? "So it's ... like a computer modeling scenario?" she essayed. "Of what?*

"Not just a statistical model," said McGraw. "This is a full simulation of reality. It's the liberation of Anchorage, Alaska from Chinese Communists. It was a pretty significant event in American history, according to our Scribe."

That much Ellen knew- and agreed with. But how did you simulate reality, anyway?

"I won't lie to you. It's heavy combat - safety protocols disengaged. that means you die in the sim and you stand a very good chance of going into massive cardiac arrest." He cocked an eye at Ellen. "You're still listening, so I'm going to assume that means you're interested. But time's wasting. Sibley can take you to the pod. Olin will get you briefed. If you want to walk away, my men won't stop you."

Ellen had her doubts that anything a computer could do could cause heart problems. She had no real reason to trust these people at this point. On the other hand, she was also pretty sure that if she didn't agree, whoever she'd overheard on the way down would find a way to come back here in a few hours' time with his very own shiny new Pip-Boy. Slowly, she nodded.

"Good," said McGraw, and jerked his chin at the man who'd led Ellen in the first place. "Sibley? Show her the way."

---

"Knock, knock, Olin, got a new best friend for you," Sibley called out as he led Ellen into a room full of more functioning mainframes than she'd ever seen in her life. Even RobCo hadn't had that many computers in one place!

"What?" came a startled woman's voice. It took Ellen a moment to pinpoint the source, as a big egg-like sculpture of some kind took up most of the middle of the room. The speaker turned out to be a blonde woman in her twenties, dressed in an odd black robe fastened at the middle with a wide metal belt. A laser pistol hung at her hip. She cast a jaundiced eye over Ellen before turning back to face Sibley head-on.

"Yep. Let's hope you treat this one better than the last guy." He snickered; Ellen winced.

Olin rolled her eyes. "Go to hell, Sibley. You know that wasn't my fault."

"Sure, whatever. Just make some progress, okay? We're all looking to get out of here."

"Fine," Olin snapped. "Then get out and let me do my job."

Sibley gave a snort and strode out of the room, leaving Ellen alone with the older woman. "You're here to help?" Olin said. "Fine. Then put this on, get in the chair, and we'll run the simulation."

She tossed something white at Ellen; it was light, but oddly stiff. It unfolded into a garment that looked like it was meant to be worn next to the skin and cover everything head-to-toe except the face. "Um, what-"

"Look," said Olin, "until you actually do something that helps us out? You're just one more liability. So put on the damned neural interface suit already."

"Excuse me," said Ellen, crossing her arms, "but I don't even know who you people are, or what you're doing here."

"Oh, for- what kind of a rock have you been living under?" Olin said. "We're the Brotherhood Outcasts, and we're doing the same thing we always do! Recovering old technology and making sure it doesn't fall into the wrong hands. McGraw's hope is that whatever's in here will give us a big advantage. I'm not convinced, but I'm on his side."

"I've been living in a Vault, thank you," says Ellen. "What do you mean, 'Brotherhood Outcasts'?"

"We're the only ones in the Brotherhood of Steel who're doing our jobs," said Olin. "And if you don't know who the Brotherhood is, I don't have time to give you a history lesson. Not with Sibley and McGraw both breathing down my neck. Finish the sim and I'll tell you."

She turned away before Ellen could say another word. Reluctantly- and only after making sure the door had closed properly- Ellen peeled off her armor and pulled the weird white garment on. It felt very strange next to her skin, but it seemed to fit well enough. "Okay," she said, "I'm dressed. What now?"

"Just a moment."

There was a whirring noise, and the egg sculpture split down the middle. As its sides folded in on themselves, Ellen realized it wasn't a sculpture at all, but instead some kind of pod. Inside there was a chair, connected to numerous fat cables. Olin didn't seem very likely to be helpful, so Ellen braced herself and clambered up into the chair. "All right," she said. "What do-"

The sides of the pod came welling up and closed around her before she could say another word; and then, everything went white...

The Guns of Anchorage

It was cold- a biting, bone-reaching kind of cold Ellen had never felt before. For a moment, she wondered if something had gone wrong with the suit. Olin had called it a neural interface. Maybe it was stimulating the wrong nerves?

"Hey. Hey!" It was a man's voice, low and gravelly. "Wake up. Come on, snap out of it."

Ellen became aware that she wasn't so much sitting as lying- flat on her back on something unbelievably cold. Blinking, trying to clear her vision, she forced herself to sit up. The world spun crazily about her for a moment. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. When she opened them again-

Well.

She was sitting on stone, under a sky so deep a blue as to be nearly black. All around her were mountains- not the jagged rockpiles of the Capital Wasteland, but real, honest-to-God mountains! With snow on them! At least she assumed it was snow- it certainly looked like what they had at Milliways. And it was more than cold enough for it, with the wind blowing straight through her. She shivered involuntarily and wrapped her arms around her middle.

"That was a hell of a nasty fall you took," said the man's voice.

Ellen's eyes jerked up from the landscape. The speaker was a nearby man in white and grey combat armor. His hair was dark and short, and he looked badly in need of a shave. "When your chute bunched up like that I thought you were a goner. I hope the other guys made it," he continued. "I don't think their patrols spotted us coming in-"

Without warning, the words Sergeant Benjamin Montgomery flickered across the bottom of her field of vision, crossing the man's midsection. Ellen nearly choked in surprise. Then she remembered what McGraw had said- that they needed her to go through a computer simulation of reality. The computer must have been identifying him for her. Okay, she could deal with that.

"-at the rendezvous point as planned," Montgomery continued, seemingly oblivious to Ellen's condition. "Then we'll blow those artillery guns to Hell. Just watch yourself. The Reds up here don't take prisoners. Good luck!"

What? Ellen wanted to ask, but Montgomery had already bolted. By the time she got to her feet, he'd begun climbing the nearest cliff face, with a level of agility she'd never imagined in a human. "Hey!" she called weakly. "Hey, wait, where's the-"

He was over the top and gone before she could say 'rendezvous point'. Fortunately, the computer system heard anyway. Her Pip-Boy bleeped at her, and she looked down to find a rudimentary local map displayed on its main screen. There wasn't much to go on, only the outlines of the area immediately around her, surrounded by the darkness of the unknown- but past that, a single blinking chevron indicated the general direction she had to travel.

Well, that was better than nothing. And it looked as if she had decent simulated equipment, too. She seemed to be wearing the same armor as Montgomery, and carrying a silenced pistol and a good-sized knife. It wasn't as comforting as her shotgun, but it would just have to do. Especially since she could make out the sound of footfalls up ahead, and Montgomery really hadn't sounded like he expected anybody up here to be friendly.

---

Ellen didn't know what was weirdest:

- the 'oxygen canisters' that glowed bright red when she approached and healed all her hurts as soon as she touched them;
- the big hopper-machines that also glowed red at her approach and yielded a 'All Ammo Replenished' message across her vision on contact;
- the way English translations of the simulated enemy soldiers' words rolled across her vision whenever they spoke;
- the way unused guns and grenades not only shimmered red but gave off a weird electronic tone to draw her attention to them; or
- possibly, just possibly, the way enemy corpses simply shimmered into blue light and disappeared.

It was a very good simulation, she had to give it that. Even Sergeant Montgomery's grumbling sounded close enough to a real person's that she could believe in it. It was just that all the weird little touches along the way made it impossible to get completely caught up. Probably just as well; killing humans who tried to attack her was a necessity, but killing computer phantoms that vanished into light was. . . almost entertaining. Ellen was pretty sure she wasn't supposed to come to like that sort of thing. Maybe the military men who designed the sim were trying to encourage recruits in their duties? She didn't know.

"Keep your eyes peeled for Commies," Montgomery muttered as they crossed an elderly, rusting bridge over a horrifyingly deep gap. "They're around. I can smell them."

Ellen nodded. The simulated soldier hadn't been wrong about their enemies' presence yet- and he wasn't wrong now. Two fur-hatted, snow-goggled Chinese soldiers burst out from around a jutting ridge of rock, shouting about General Jingwei. Ellen dove for the shelter of the nearest crate, the better to brace her assault rifle and tear the nearer of the two apart with automatic fire; Montgomery lit into the other one with his own gun, snarling "And that's how we do it in the Corps!" as the other man fell, gleamed blue, and vanished. It really was disturbingly exhilarating. She had to remind herself that the Outcasts had indicated a real possibility of physical death existed here.

"How much further have we got to go?" she called to Montgomery. Hopefully the mission would be over soon and she could get back to the real world.

"Enh, the entrance to the artillery base is up ahead," said Montgomery. "I dunno what they got waiting for us, so keep a sharp watch."

Ellen grimaced, but nodded. The sooner they made it to the entrance, the sooner they'd be through it, and the sooner they'd be off the cliffs. Best to move quickly, but be careful.

The doors to the artillery facility hove into sight shortly thereafter, and Ellen's stomach sank; they were flanked by a pair of fortifications, each crowded with Chinese soldiers. The ones who lunged out of the concrete bunkers died quickly, but the smarter ones stayed inside, firing out through the slitted windows. "Nuts!" she swore, reloading her assault rifle. "Sergeant, how do we-"

Montgomery wasn't listening, though. "Got a little present for you from Uncle Sam, Commie!" he growled as he saturated the air with ammo. Ellen winced, dashing sideways the instant there was room to make a stab at flanking the enemy positions. She caught sight of an open doorway and silently thanked God for small favors; then she tore a grenade loose from her belt, hefted it, and pulled the pin.

Warning, her vision suddenly said as she let the grenade fly. Chinese Inferno Unit ahead.

"What?"

The world erupted in flame. Ellen just had time to catch sight of a man's outline through the fire before her grenade's explosion added to the deal. She staggered backwards, one arm trying futilely to protect her face. It might have been her imagination, but she thought she could hear Montgomery's encouraging voice over the roaring and the ringing in her ears. Before the pain of burns could set in, she grabbed for another grenade; she didn't need to see to use those…

When the smoke cleared and Montgomery came trotting up to meet her, Ellen could see the flashing red forms of an oxygen canister and an ammo hopper inside the nearest fortification. She staggered in and rested her head on the canister, silently grateful not to be surrounded by corpses. "Was that it?" she said. "Are we good?"

"Out here? Yeah," said Montgomery. "We're gonna have to plough on through, though. Place is probably swarming with Reds."

Lovely, Ellen thought. 'Swarming' was very much not a word that she wanted to hear.

---

The message floated across Ellen's field of vision for the third time:

This is one of the massive enemy Artillery Guns. Once you plant an Explosive Charge, you have 20 seconds to reach a safe distance before it explodes. Plant charge, or do nothing?

"Plant charge," she said. "Now."

They'd made it through the artillery building by the skin of their teeth. Between the ordinary Chinese soldiers, the ones with sniper rifles, and those dratted 'Crimson Dragoons' in their weird black stealth armor, Ellen had been sure a few times that she'd never be free of Alaska again. But after that last room with the endless lines of shells being prepped for loading into the giant guns, Montgomery had found the door to outside. The wind whipping across the Anchorage cliffs cut through her armor's face mask like a knife, but that was all right. This was the third of the giant artillery guns pounding on the American soldiers at the Anchorage Front. This was the last.

You have twenty seconds to reach a safe distance before it explodes, the simulation informed her. Ellen heaved a sigh of relief. "Montgomery!" she yelled. "You can run now!"

She certainly did, that was for sure. Whatever was in those charges, it could scythe one of the guns off the face of the earth- and the guns were each easily a quarter of the size of the entire town of Megaton. She really didn't want to find out what would happen if she didn't reach that safe distance- she hadn't come this far to fall just short of the finish line.

Ellen ran. Montgomery ran. The wind at their backs urged them on. The world went-

BRRRRABOOOM.

Report to General Chase at the U. S. Field Headquarters, the display laconically informed Ellen as everything went white.