aaaaaaaagh_sky | RobCo Facility

The trek from Megaton to where Moira said the RobCo facility had been took longer than Ellen had expected. She'd started out from Megaton just as soon as the sun came up, the better to make her way south over unfamiliar, uneven ground. Moira had given her a processor widget to install before attempting any downloads; it was nestled snugly in her backpack between two days' worth of rations for two people. No sense taking chances, after all.

The distance hadn't been the big issue, though. The real source of delays, Ellen felt, was the landscape itself. Southwest of Megaton the surface became more and more uneven, rocky and hilly in places, studded with the long-dead remains of multiple trees in others. More than once she had to climb over the fallen rubble that was all that remained of the old elevated roads, only to have to turn around and pick her way across some other area to avoid landing in radioactive ground-water. And if that weren't enough, all of it was anything but empty. More than once she found herself chased by starving wild dogs or harassed by mole rats. In one area, she had to outrun a gang of spike-wearing Raiders, one of whom was armed with a missile launcher. She regretted leaving the sniper rifle home then, to be sure.

Eventually, though, she spotted one of the huge metalwork towers she'd assumed were navigational markers. As she followed its lines to the next tower, and the next, she spotted a hefty-looking grey building up ahead, easily twice the size of Super-Duper Mart. It was surrounded by broken grey stone that might once have all been of one piece, and here and there slender metal posts- possibly lamps of some kind- rose from the ground. The slanting rays of the sun as it crept down the western sky picked out faded red lettering over the door, an R and a couple of O's; she checked her Pip-Boy.

Yep. Looked like the RobCo facility, all right.

Ellen glanced around and started a perimeter sweep, just to be on the safe side. There were no enemies in sight, whether Raiders or Talon Company, save for a black beast somewhat larger than Ellen that turned out to be a giant scorpion, of all things. It was a tough one, too, not giving up the ghost until she'd emptied five or six shotgun shells into it. She eyed it, opted not to bother trying to butcher it (Moira had said she could get good meat butchering any mirelurks she managed to kill, but never said anything about scorptions), and moved on. There was some kind of enormous tower to the south, she noted, possibly the single biggest building she'd ever seen. She'd have to explore it later, if she ever got the chance.

For now the important thing was that there was a bit of chain-link fence up ahead that still had its gate hanging on by rusty, fragile hinges. She opened it and stepped through to Milliways in search of Alyx Vance.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

"Nice work," says Ellen, and eyes the corpses thoughtfully. Then she shakes her head. "I'm not so hard up just yet that I need to butcher them... let's keep moving." She does, however, pause briefly as they pass a twisted hunk of metal with a rounded end poking out of it. After a little scrabbling in the mess she comes up with both hands full and a satisfied expression. "Dead Protectron," she explains. "The power cells my pistol runs on? They're the same model the Protectrons use for their own weapons."

A little ways further along the corridor opens out into a high-ceilinged room, A machine shop or factory floor once, the place smells of rust and mildew. Dirty windows stretch from the floor to the ceiling thirty feet overhead, illuminating the place but casting long shadows over the wreckage of industry. It may have been a packing area for parts, once; there are elements of what looks like a conveyor belt still recognizable in the middle of the floor, alongside the larger machinery. A catwalk runs around the room a little bit above floor level, leading into what might have been a control facility at some point.

As Ellen pauses to take stock of the place, the scrabbling of mole rat feet can be heard again. She grimaces and turns to look for it.

From:

vance_prime

Alyx edges her way along the catwalk, eyes on the equipment in the center of the room. There's no lights on or motors moving, but she could swear she hears a faint, high-pitched hum just on the edge of hearing, like the barely-perceptible sound a cathode monitor makes when it's turned on.

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

A few quick zap! zap! noises later, the scrambling noises cease. "I think that's the last one," Ellen calls. "Find any- oh blast."

Another zap.

"Radroach. Sorry. Anyway, did you find anything?"

From:

vance_prime

"I think some of these machines still have power," calls Alyx. Sure enough, although the terminal screens are dark, there are a few indicator lights in the control center that still glow with life. She taps what she thinks might be an oscilloscope of some description. "Oh, and there's another busted robot over here."

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

"Ooh." Ellen jogs over to have a look. "Thanks... oh, hey, look at this."

Wedged between the remains of the Protectron and the wall is a miraculously undamaged (damp-smelling, but otherwise undamaged) hard-cover volume entitled The Trail of the Fox. Ellen frowns a little and starts thumbing through it, but it doesn't seem to be anything related to robots or computers. With a shrug, she adds it to her backpack. Who knows, it might be entertaining someday.

From:

vance_prime

Alyx leans over, following the power cables trailing out of the backs of the machines. One of the terminal cords looks to have been gnawed on at some point in the past. Maybe...

"Hang on a second."

Alyx drops off the edge of the raised platform on which the control center is located. If she stands on tiptoe, she can just barely reach up to unplug that device in the corner and toss the end of the cord up onto the platform. She then levers herself up onto the platform again, unplugs the ruined cord from the terminal, and replaces it with the other.

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

For a moment it looks as if nothing had changed at all. Then- agonizingly slowly- one of the screens flickers into life, green glowing letters on a black background.

ROBCO INDUSTRIES UNIFIED OPERATING SYSTEM COPYRIGHT 2075-2077 ROBCO INDUSTRIES -Server 1- > Activate Conveyor > Protectron Pod Empty > Employee Manual > Facility Orientation

From:

vance_prime

"Sweet." Alyx beams. "Let's see what we can find..."

She taps the Down arrow until "Facility Orientation" is highlighted, then hits Enter.

"Bingo. We have a map straight to the central mainframe."

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

"Let me snag that," says Ellen, moving forward and running her hand around the sides of the terminal until she finds a port. A few fiddling bits with the dials on her Pip-Boy later and she has a short, but serviceable, connection to the data port on the side of the terminal. Which is just as well given that the screen blinks out a moment later. "Nice work, Alyx. Thank you."

From:

vance_prime

"Ah, it was nothing," says Alyx with a dismissive wave. "I'm surprised it was that easy, actually. There should have been a login screen or something..."

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

"We didn't always lock our terminals in the Vault," Ellen says. "Maybe whoever used this terminal last got caught unawares in the middle of the workday when the bombs fell, and never had time to lock it up."

From:

vance_prime

Thanks so much for that cheerful insight, thinks Alyx. Aloud, she says, "The straightest shot to the mainframe should be through that door on the other wall, I think."

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

"Sounds good to me," says Ellen, and starts off with pistol drawn. "Is it on this floor?"

From:

vance_prime

"Nah, it was up a couple of floors," replies Alyx, following close behind. "I just hope the stairs are in good working WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!"

That last would be addressed to the radroach that just crawled across their path.

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

"Radroach," says Ellen, almost idly zapping it with the laser pistol. "I used to kill 'em all the time with my BB gun. You don't have those?"

From:

vance_prime

"No. We have antlions and headcrabs, but nothing like that."

Alyx has a strong aversion to oversized scuttling arthropods. It's a thing.

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

"Oh," says Ellen. "Well, they pack a nasty bite, but unless you get a bunch of them and you're really unprepared they can't do all that much harm. I think one of the Vault security guards got killed by radroaches, but there were four or five of them at a time."

From:

vance_prime

"...good to know," says Alyx, eying the dead radroach dubiously. "Most of the things in my world that look like that are much nastier."

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

"You want to watch out for the bloatflies," Ellen notes. "They're a little smaller than my head and they can hit you with larval bundles from a distance- they're kinda toxic. The bundles, I mean."

From:

vance_prime

"Now that sounds like an antlion. Only they spit acid that can melt through rock."

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

"There's giant ants that do that," says Ellen, "but I think it's just the queens. And there were the fire ants, but those were only the one colony in Grayditch-"

They've been progressing through half-collapsed rooms and edging around furniture. Up ahead, a cluster of mole rats is snuffling around what was once the pool table in an employee break room.

From:

vance_prime

Alyx doesn't even blink. She just opens fire.

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

Between the machine pistol and the laser fire, the rats didn't stand a chance. The two radroaches that come scuttling out from the next room, wings flaring, might possibly be a different story- especially since one of them leaps for the humans the instant there's a pause in the gunfire.

From:

vance_prime

Not a chance. Alyx hasn't spent twenty years dodging headcrabs to get taken down by an overgrown cockroach. Her gunfire splatters it in midair.

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

The other one is swiftly separated from its head by a burst of surprisingly precise laser fire. Ellen shakes her head as the insect parts roll away. Before she can comment, something catches her eye. "Ooh. Are you thirsty? I could use a drink," she says, and heads for one of the room's Nuka-Cola machines.