Tenpenny Tower

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The door opens onto a fenced-in, rubble-strewn yard perhaps big enough to park a golf cart in. "This used to be some kind of power station or something," Ellen says. "I'm not really sure- even the Scribes said there was too much taken from it to be certain. We're a good distance away from the wind farm perimeter, so there's going to be some walking before we get to the place, but it was the only way I could make it reasonably plausible to have gotten hold of you."

Comments

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo shrugs. "No biggie." Some things you just can't control.

He checks his gear one last time - he's switched it up a bit, focusing on greater firepower in a lighter overall load, with a HK417 replacing his usual machine gun and an MP7 sitting pretty slung across his back.

"So who got shot?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Scribe Librada Younes. Order of the Quill," Ellen says. "She's a historian, and several years older than me. She's also one of the best authorities on pre-War electronics I've ever seen. She'd taken me out to show me some damage to an external wiring circuit on one of the southern turbines when the sniper got her in the shoulder."

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo nods, once. "How's she doin' now? Think I could ask her some questions?"

As they walk, his head is on a constant swivel, watching for silhouettes and movement on the horizon. Nothing there - not yet - but a healthy dose of vigilance never hurt anyone.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"We got enough Buffout into her to cut down on the bleeding and immediate tissue damage," says Ellen, "and then we had to get her back to the main building while it was still in effect so Rama could dig out the bullet. Stimpaks should fix up most of the damage, but you don't want the body to heal around something like that... anyway, she's in the break room on the ground floor. Unless she needed more Med-X after I left, she'll be able to answer questions."

South Perimeter

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Night falls fast in the Wasteland at this time of year. The soldiers of the NCR would give an arm and a leg to be stationed here; you can't call this a nuclear winter, but it's certainly one hell of a relief from the nuclear summer that's got its grip on the Mojave in 2281.

There's still some degree of light out, although a fair amount of it comes from the systems set up to keep parts of the turbines and perimeter area illuminated. Why waste laser power on animals if they can just be discouraged through ordinary light?

Re: South Perimeter

[boston_bruiser]

A reasonable workaround, that. It plays hell with Voodoo's NODs, but you gotta do what you gotta do, right?

All is quiet in the wasteland, save for the sluggish chirping of crickets and the occasional bark of a feral dog. Soon, there is a new noise, a soft crump as Voodoo drops to the wasteland soil from the bottom rung of the southern turbine. It was easy enough to see where Younes had been shot - the blood, still red, had made sure of that - and it was easier still to shoot a bearing from the top rung.

And, of course, it pointed to Tenpenny Tower. It wasn't exactly CSI: Capital Wasteland.

After a cursory patdown and gear check, Voodoo takes a suppressor out of his pack, threads it onto the HK417's muzzle, loads a magazine of subsonic ammunition, drops his night vision goggles over his eyes, and sets out for the tower at a fast crouchwalk.

(To hell with the Dead Poets. Carpe noctem is the way to go.)

Re: South Perimeter

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

There are rooms in the Tower that have lights burning already- not many, but they're there. It's a big tower. Must've been a good ten or fifteen stories tall, once. By the look of things- assuming the architecture in this crazy mistake of a world is anything like the architecture back home- it was probably a hotel, rather than an office tower or an apartment building. It's ringed at a moderate distance by a wall of high concrete slabs, the tops of which are supplemented with ancient barbed wire and other, similarly salutary 'go somewhere else' messages.

(Not that they've cleared away enough rocks and rubble on the western side to prevent a particularly persistent and agile would-be entrant from making an attempt at jumping said wall, you understand.)

If there are guards- and there almost certainly are- they're not outside the walls.

Re: South Perimeter

[boston_bruiser]

No, they aren't, are they? It takes Voodoo ten minutes to complete an inspection of the outer perimeter, noting all the little details as he does so, and that's one of the things that sticks out in his mind. Usually you'd have at least a couple of guys making the rounds outside the wire, but not here. It points to either a lack of manpower, an unwillingness on the part of the management to send them outside the walls, or both.

Well, time to see how true the former is, hm?

Voodoo stops and takes a knee by the southern wall. A big rock, a little bigger than his fist, lies half-buried in the topsoil, and he digs it out and juggles it in his hand. After a cursory examination, he nods -

- then flings it over the barbed wire.

Warrington

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

It's a fair few miles in the dark before Voodoo's likely to run across anybody who resembles the 'damn zombies' the guards at the Tower spoke of. There used to be small-town homes and shops scattered around the area, a few of which are even still... well, not so much standing as slumping. About the same as any other Wasteland house, really. Nothing much to report on there.

But there's a place where they used to gather up Metro trains for maintenance west of the residential homes, too. Fenced in, full of half-destroyed trains and sheds, and more than a few tunnel entrances going down into the ground. And there are shapes that move like they used to be human darting among some of them.

[boston_bruiser]

Well now, this is interesting.

Voodoo's gear is better than most, but the picture from his NODs is admittedly grainy. It's not until he closes to within a couple dozen feet of the trainyard that he realizes what he's up against.

He slows, brings his rifle up, thumbs the safety to semiautomatic, and enters the yard, sidestepping along the perimeter, his back to the fence as the ghouls lope about. He saw one dart behind this sleeping car - if he can just get arou- ah, there.

thwock. thwockthwockthwock.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

They're not the brightest stars in the sky, these ferals. The most anyone's going to get out of them is a "BLAAAARG!" before they fall.

'Course, there's several more of them running in the direction of the gunshots, because gunshots mean person and person means maybe food, but as we said... not the brightest stars in the sky.

[boston_bruiser]

Yeah, no. Voodoo's seen brighter lights on an electrical stove.

It's a trivial thing to flip the fire selector to full auto and give them two rounds apiece, but the boys and girls at Heckler & Koch don't have a flawless uberweapon in the 417 - its limitations are plenty, and the 20-round magazine is one of them. There are more ghouls than Voodoo has bullets, and soon the firing pin produces a resounding click as it meets an empty chamber.

Warrington Tunnels

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Somewhere up above Stevil is running for his life, possibly from a bear. If anyone ever hears from him again, it'll be a wonder.

Down here, though, there are roaches the size of babies, and rubble fallen from Metro tunnel ceilings, and sodium light in the distance. And, if one is not careful, the occasional tripwire or... huh, that looks like an old V8 engine block loosely chained to the ceiling, waiting to fall on the heads of the unwary.

You get the idea.

[boston_bruiser]

It's the very same engine block that's got Voodoo's eye, and he cranes his neck this way and that, regarding it in the darkness.

A V8.

Well, it's no anvil, there's no ACME, and he's no Roadrunner, but you gotta work with what you got in this world.

He scans the ground for tripwires and finds one a couple inches from his left boot, shimmering in his nightvision. He steps around it, shouldering his rifle as he creeps forward along the wall, rolling his feet with every step.

Except an errant step comes with a CRUNCH as the remnants of an ancient beer bottle crack beneath his boot.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"You hear that?" rasps a voice in the distance. Possibly male. Depends on whether the speaker swallowed a Brillo pad or not.

"Yeah." That one's female. Probably. "Think those jokers are coming back?"

"They'd better not be."

[boston_bruiser]

Well, there goes his chances of sneaking up on them.

"They ain't," Voodoo says. "I killed them. Call it a show of good faith."

Back at the Tower

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The night's not getting any younger. Overhead the stars spill across a largely unpolluted night sky. The lights around the RobCo perimeter glimmer in the distance, though, and there's a faint glow to the east that might be where Rivet City lies, or might be the Citadel. Hard to say.

Tenpenny Tower itself, now, that's another story. There's a good few lighted windows- maybe a quarter of the building is either inhabited or just lit up for the sake of being lit up, by the look of things. And there's lights around the edges of the tower perimeter wall, too, although most of those are pointed inward.

Re: Back at the Tower

[boston_bruiser]

Lights on the perimeter wall, huh?

Shit.

The mission's complicated enough already - get in, unlock the tunnel, get out, no hostile contact, no killing. But once he gets over that wall, he'll be totally exposed.

At least, Voodoo thinks as he settles in along the western wall, lights and guards are all he's got to deal with. But the space is tight, real tight, and those lights and guards might just be his undoing.

The generator for these lights is likely inside. He's going to need to get creative for this one.

Suddenly - an idea.

He creeps over to the intercom - they've taken out the chip, but the wires are still hanging out. A few tweaks with the current and some pliers, and-

-the intercom emits the unholy screech of feedback.

Re: Back at the Tower

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"What the- okay, that's it, we're gonna find this asshole and put him down good."

Sounds like the guards weren't too thrilled with the music to begin with. Some people, they get cranky at night.

At The Foot Of The Tower

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

It's shaping up to be a fine morning, with the sun creeping up the eastern horizon. There's a good breeze; the turbines will be spinning in earnest today. The lights of the Tower are more or less shut down, aside from the ones around the edges of the wall.

As the sun begins to heave over the horizon, there's a gleam of something metallic far up near the topmost floor of the tower.

[boston_bruiser]

Well, well. A promising sign.

Up strolls Voodoo to the gate, his rifle slung across his back, his hands in his pockets. When he reaches it, he raps on it three times and stands back.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Whaaaaaaaaaat?" comes a man's voice from over the gate. Not drunk, just highly annoyed. It's been a long night.

Back At RobCo

[boston_bruiser]

It's a fifteen minute walk to RobCo from Tenpenny Tower if you're going as the crow flies. For Voodoo, it's more like a forty minute walk - first he's gotta strip the ten or so guys he's killed of their armor and weapons, just in case any of the cleverer residents get any ideas about taking advantage of the power vacuum. And then he's gotta make a very special stop for the man himself.

He approaches the wind farm with Tenpenny's smoking jacket and jodhpurs slung over his shoulders. The boots are hanging by straps on his pack. Once he sees the two Knights standing guard, he raises Tenpenny's rifle above his head.

"Rack 'em up," he says. "One of you do me a favor and get Paladin Park for me, wouldja?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The shorter of the Knights looks startled; the other one says, "He means Paladin 101. Go get her, please."

So there's a nod and a hasty salute, and then the shorter Knight runs off. A few minutes later she returns with Ellen in tow. "Everything okay?" she says.

[boston_bruiser]

"Yeah," Voodoo says, coming to a stop before them. "I'd say everything's okay. Tenpenny ain't gonna take potshots at you guys no more. Secured some weapons and armor off his guards - figured you might wanna strip 'em for parts."

He digs into a pants pocket and produces a key, a tarnished brass-looking thing. "Got the key to his suite, too," he says, holding it up to the light, "though I kinda-sorta blew up the lock it goes to. A lot of the door went with it."

What're you gonna do, right?