Radio

There were worse things to wake up to at three-thirty in the morning than a slightly overzealous robot at your cot's side, announcing "Primary mast structure complete. Notification delivered immediately, as requested." Undoubtedly there were worse.

Ellen would have to think of them later. She was too busy trying to get her heart to stop hammering in her ears.

---

"... we really built that," said 101, staring up at the outline of the mast's structure silhouetted against the stars of the Wasteland sky. "That whole thing."

"Yep," said Thornburgh. He wasn't particularly pleased at being awakened so early, but hell, the radio project had been kind of fascinating to work on. Being roused three hours ahead of schedule to see the fruit of that labor made real? He could live with that. "All of it. Scavenged and cut the pipes, dug the holes and sank the rebar into the foundation, welded everything in place, ran the guy wires- we did it. Everything except get the dish up."

It might've been just his imagination, but 101 suddenly looked seriously pale. Then again, there was a full moon up. Everybody looked pale under moonlight. "Mind if-" She paused. "Can I get a reason for that?"

"Didn't want it mounted on an incomplete structure. Anything went wrong with the construction, we'd be out one seriously rare and hard to replace component."

"All right," 101 said slowly. "That... makes sense. But it's going up in the morning, right?"

"Sure is, ma'am."

"And someone else is going to get it up there?"

Thornburgh couldn't help but laugh. "Do I look like a climber, ma'am? Don't answer that," he said. "No, don't worry. Younes is going to do it, although she doesn't know it yet."

"Good," said 101. She reached up and rested one hand a moment on the nearest guy wire. "Good. The sooner, the better. Once the sun's up, of course."

"Of course, ma'am."

---

There were radio sets in the Citadel, plenty of them. Most of them worked, if you pointed them at a frequency that anybody bothered to broadcast on any more. Mostly that meant Three Dog and Agatha these days, ever since the Enclave went silent. They kept an ear out on that frequency, though. Just in case. Vallincourt kept a radio tuned to the old Enclave frequency in her part of the lab; she found the static soothing. It flattened out the background noises of the other Scribes and let her think.

It wasn't supposed to suddenly crackle and squeal like that, though. That was somebody trying to signal, or she was a Deathclaw's uncle. "Go get Scribe Rothchild," she snapped at the nearest junior Scribe. "We've got a-"

"-sorry! Sorry, ma'am, I didn't-"
"Are you all right, Sprunk? Check that thing over- did anything get broken?"
"I'm fine, I just tripped-"
"Ma'am, is that light supposed to be on?"
"Oh, God, the test's not for another two hours. Um. Anyone listening? I'm sorry, this wasn't supposed to- look, this is Paladin 101 of the Brotherhood of Steel-"

Somewhere, Vallincourt was suddenly convinced, the ghost of Marconi was laughing.

The Signal

The first Brotherhood test of the radio signal went well. So did the second- the official one. There were hangovers aplenty on both ends the next day, but the viability of the radio tower at RobCo as a means of communication with the Citadel had been established. A day or two later, after some adjustment and reconfiguration, Scribe Sprunk was able to make contact with Three Dog and then, two hours later, with Agatha. Over the next several days they picked up a few ground-bound signals, but all of them already existed on a list of known pre-War signal sources still operating off ancient fission batteries. They were so unchanging that Brotherhood and Outcast patrols tended to use them as navigation beacons; they had nothing to do with people any more. That was fine. Ellen could deal with that. She and the Scribes scratched those frequencies off their list of things to try, and went on.

On the first day, and the first night besides, despite scanning all the sky they could for all frequencies in the vicinity of the one Ellen remembered her Pip-Boy picking up, there was nothing.

On the second day, Scribe Younes sidled up to Ellen and quietly pointed out that an object in low Earth orbit would be circling the planet once every ninety minutes, and that it would only be visible from a radius of roughly six hundred and twenty miles from the sub-satellite point. Even if they found the right frequency, they were going to have an awfully small window of opportunity to signal their target. That got her a glare, and then a sigh, and a quiet thanks for the unpleasant reminder.

But it didn't stop the scanning, nor the signaling; and on the third night, as the sun set and the D layer of the ionosphere faded into insignificance, a light in the radio room came on that made Younes switch off the recording of Agatha's violin they'd been sending into space.

"-lo? Hello, can anyone-"

"We read you, unidentified signal source," said Younes, who was trying not to dance in her seat. "We're a ground-bound station at latitude 38.873, longitude negative 77.234. Who are we talking to?"

"... are you human?"

Younes did dance a little in her chair at that. "Yes, sir," she said as calmly as she could (which wasn't very). "We are. I promise."

"Oh thank God. I didn't know if anyone was left alive...."

A clatter of feet in the corridor outside the radio room signaled Paladin 101's arrival. Younes lifted a hand in acknowledgment and said, "Unknown signal source, I'm going to hand you over to my superior now. Do not go offline if you can help it."

"Your- wait, what? Who is this?"

"You've been speaking to Scribe Librada Younes of the Capital Wasteland Brotherhood of Steel," said 101, who was making absolutely no effort to keep the smile on her face out of her voice. "She's the technical lead on our radio signaling project. We've been trying to reach you for a while, my friend."

"I- this is- I'm not giving my name or service number until I know who the hell this is!"

"Elliott," said 101, smile broadening into a grin, "it's okay. You know me. You gave me General Chase's overcoat, remember?"

".....Ellen???"

Silently, 101 leaned over and held one hand out to Scribe Younes for a high-five.