Chapter 167: Reactor Action

Chapter 167: Reactor Action

AHWOOOO! That's right, children! It's me, Three Dog! BOW WOW! First things first, I gotta shout out, and give a little love to all of you out there, taking time to call in and let me know what you think of the new music: you guys rock! I think I knew, deep down, that you all would like it, but I never imagined I would get this kind of response so quickly! All of you kick ass, I'm more than happy to keep spinning these new tunes! Up next, we've got a little bit of Jimi Hendrix tellin' us all that "The Wind Cries Mary." Only on GNR!New novel chapters are published on

I emerged through the curtain of sparks and lightning, stepping off the teleport platform and back into the Lucky 38.

"Hey, Yes Man!" I called, not even slowing down as I entered the main room. Immediately, the big monitor winked into life and Yes Man's smiling face appeared.

"Hi there!" he said. "What can I do for you today?" As he spoke, Emily appeared at the edge of the room, carrying a fresh pot of coffee and two mugs.

"Boone said you had some work for me to do?" I asked, sliding down the banister and landing with a heavy metal thud. Emily handed me a steaming hot cup of coffee, which I took with a nod. "Thanks."

"I do, indeed!" Yes Man said, his monitor flickering briefly. "I was actually going to wait until you came back from saving the President..." he began, but I waved him off.

"Eh, President Dickhead can keep till morning."

"Kimball," Emily corrected.

"Whatever," I said with a shrug. Yes Man's monitor flickered again.

"Well, if you're willing to do it right now, then that's fine, too!" he said. "I think it's time for us to activate one of the two locks preventing access to the underground securitron army on standby! Specifically: the lock within the El Dorado Dry Lake Substation!"

"Oh yeah, I think I remember you saying something 'bout that, like... a week ago..." I took a sip of coffee. Had it really only been about a week since I killed Vulpes? Felt like longer. "Wasn't there something about a cold fusion reactor, too?"

"I did indeed!" Yes Man said, as his face vanished from the big monitor. It was replaced by a schematic wireframe, but he kept talking as the image assembled itself. "Although, describing the reactor as 'Cold Fusion' doesn't really do it justice. It's only cold in the sense that it has the ability to generate electricity without first generating heat!"

"Wait a minute..." Emily practically whispered next to me, transfixed by the image as it took shape on the screen. Her mouth was wide open and her glasses were slipping down the bridge of her nose. "I think I've seen this before..."

"You have?" I asked, calmly sipping on my coffee. She started slowly nodding.

"About a month ago, when April, Arcade and I were going through some of House's files..." she said absentmindedly. I vaguely recalled the three of them arguing about something like that when I came back. And then it hit me:

"Wait, is this the thing that you needed the palladium for?" I asked, and she nodded much quicker.

"Yes Man, are you saying that this reactor exists?" she asked him, as the schematic on the screen winked away to be replaced by Yes Man's huge smiling face. "It's not just drawings on a blueprint?"

"It does indeed exist!" he replied happily.

"Can... can we see it?" she asked.

"No!"

It took me several seconds to register what he'd just said, as it was the same tone of voice he always used.

"Wait, what?" I asked incredulously. "Why not?"

"Because she didn't say the magic word!" I could almost swear that I heard the slightest hint of a laugh in his voice. Emily, on the other hand, just sighed heavily and started rubbing her temple.

"Right. Yes, I know, I fixed your programming so you're no longer physically obligated to comply with abandon to every order given to you... but can we please see the reactor?"

Ding.

"The elevator is waiting!" he said, before the big monitor switched off. I turned to Emily, took another sip of coffee, and motioned to the elevator.

"Shall we?" She laughed, and the two of us headed up the stairs to the elevator. "So, you fixed Yes Man's programming, huh? You didn't tell me about that."

"Yes, I did..." she said, although I could hear the uncertainty in her voice. And that was only compounded when she followed it up with: "At least... I think I did..."

Ding.

"How do you still have those rocket boots?" Emily asked as the two of us exited the elevator, into a cavernous basement made of concrete. "Didn't you say they were blown up when you went to the Moon?"

"Oh, the original ones got broken, sure..." I shrugged, finishing off the last little bit of my coffee. "But Jeeves' scanned the boots when I recovered them from Y-15 the first time, so he had them on file in that holographic replicator of his." I chuckled. "No big deal."

Before we could continue, there was a heavy clunk over our heads, and the lights in the ceiling came on, one by one. Ahead of us was a large curved structure easily two stories high and perhaps forty feet wide. Metal panels on the structure opened up, revealing curved glass walls, and faintly glowing arcs of electricity moving in waves along the interior edges. The lightning was concentrated most heavily around dozens of metal rings, each placed about a foot apart from one another.

"Welcome to the reactor!" Yes Man's voice boomed from a speaker somewhere above us, and echoed throughout the cavernous chamber. Immediately, Emily rushed up to it, spouting off all this science jargon that I might have been able to understand if she'd managed to take a pause for breath. Something about electromagnetic coils arranged in a torus or something...

"It looks like a big glass donut," I said, finally. Emily paused in her ranting to shoot me a look of UTTER disdain, but I ignored it. "So, how is this gonna work, anyway?"

"Mr. House found a way to utilize the beta decay of a specific palladium isotope, and turn it into a power source!" Yes Man said; Emily looked up at the ceiling in confusion.

"Wait, are you talking about when palladium-107 decays into silver?" she asked, and Yes Man (in his ever cheerful tone) replied in the affirmative. "But... but that doesn't make sense, though! There's no net electrical current when the electron is released, because it balances out the proton count between the two resulting atoms!" I was about to interject, but Yes Man cut me off.

"Ah, but you're not taking into account the imbalance of protons and electrons in the center of the reactor, thanks to the influx of gamma radiation!" Suddenly, recognition dawned on Emily's face.

"Wait, so then that means... does the electron-photon counterflow create a deficit of electrons in the core? And the ejection of electrons from the core to the rim produces an "

"GUYS!" I shouted, raising my arms trying to get them to stop. "You know what, forget it. I was hoping you guys could dumb this down to my level, but I forgot you're scared of heights." Emily laughed, remembering that joke she'd made when she tried to explain muons. "What I really want to know: why do we need the El Dorado Substation to send it a burst of power?"

"What do you mean?" Emily looked confused.

"Well, look at this thing," I said, gesturing to the electricity arcing between the metal coils inside the rounded glass tube... donut... torus thing. "There's electricity inside, it's all glowy and shit... It looks like it's running already."

"It is running!" Yes Man replied. "But not at full capacity! House never got the chance to turn it on completely before the world ended! Not to mention, two centuries of little to no maintenance has caused the reactor's output to decay into 3.8% of its optimal capacity. At its current power level, it's enough to provide power to the casino, the computer network of House's systems, and the teleporter but not the command and control tower allowing tactical control of the securitron army. Fun fact: if House's life support system was still active, the teleport pad wouldn't work! Both devices have roughly the same power draw! Isn't that neat?"

Result.

I let out a sigh of relief. So far, no one had noticed me, and there were definitely not going to be any troopers, since there didn't seem to be any way up here. I mean, not unless the NCR had decided to have the roofs of all of their buildings guarded by big scary dogs airdropped into the location by parachute... But that would be ridiculous.

Almost as ridiculous as riding in an alien spaceship to go fight Space Nazis on the Moon.

"... Sheason, what are you doing?" Sue asked. "Why are you looking at the sky?"

"Just paranoid, I guess..." I laughed to myself, shaking my head as I moved to the skylight. I opened it up and carefully dropped down to

"Freeze!" a female voice barked, punctuated by the unmistakable metal clack of an AR-15's charging rifle being pulled, drowning out the sound of my boots hitting the ground. I didn't move at first mostly because I was so surprised. And then I remembered: I turned off the camo before climbing onto the roof. Very slowly and cautiously, I raised both my hands in the air and stood up straight.

"Who are you? You a ranger?" the female voice called out from somewhere behind me. "No, that's not Ranger armor... Who are you?"

I tried to weigh my options. It's possible that my armor would be able to take the shot if she got trigger-happy and decided to fire, but on the other hand... Sue was definitely not the Gun Runner armor. Plus, if she fired, then everyone else outside would hear the sound. I could try dropping a smoke grenade, but that would only obscure her sight, not disable her. A flashbang might do the trick, but that has the same problem as the rifle: too much noise. She has the drop on me, which meant that the chloroform I'd prepared was continuing to be useless. That copy of the "Compliance Regulator" I'd borrowed (and replicated) from Chris was inside my duster, but I wouldn't be able to draw it without her shooting me first.

"Who do you think I am?" I growled out, still keeping my hands in the air and slowly looking over my shoulder. The blonde girl in the NCR uniform with the rifle trained on me couldn't be more than 25. Maybe younger, I dunno. Despite that, she didn't seem scared.

The rifle in her hands wasn't shaking, at least.

"You're that Courier everyone has been talking about..." she said, after a very long pause. She didn't lower the rifle yet. "Aren't you?"

"Got it in one," I chuckled.

"Are you going to kill me?" she asked; her voice cracked slightly near the end. I turned on my heel, swiveling in place very slowly, and faced her with my hands still in the air. She kept her rifle trained on me, but didn't fire just yet.

"Not unless I have to," I said, staring at her from behind the blue lenses of my helmet. "I don't want to... but I will if you force me." She adjusted the grip on her rifle, and her jaw clenched.

"I've been assigned to guard this location," she said. "And every trooper in the Mojave knows about the Courier. That he... you're not to be trusted. Things explode around you. You're just the kind of danger I'm supposed to guard against."

"Yeah, well... what I'm doing here isn't going to affect the NCR in the slightest," I said, finally lowering my hands. She still didn't shoot. "If you've heard of me, then you know I'm no fan of the Legion. I've just got to do something here, real quick, that will help me kick those slave-trading fucks in the balls. And then I'll be on my way again. It's just an unhappy coincidence that you guys have set up shop here..."

She stared at me down the sights of her rifle for several seconds. I stood my ground, just waiting for the shot, hoping that if she did decide to fire, I'd be fast enough with VATS to block it with my cybernetic arm or the Pip Boy casing...

She slowly lowered the rifle.

"Just... Just do what you need to do and get the fuck out," she said, aiming her rifle at the ground but keeping a very firm grip on it.

I nodded at her, silently letting out the breath I'd been holding, and moved to one of the nearby terminals. Yes Man was currently in my ear, giving me a walkthrough of what I needed to do. So while I got to work, I decided to try and ease the tension in the room. Somewhat.

"What's your name, kid?" I asked, looking at her over my shoulder as I pressed the needed buttons and flipped the various toggles.

"Mags..." she muttered, clearly a bit unsure where this was going. To be honest, I didn't know my own self.

"You from up north?" I asked, continuing to follow the instructions in my ear. "I think I recognize that accent." She nodded slowly.

"Uh, yeah... I'm from Reno," she said with a cough. "Joined up 'cause I wanted to be a Ranger. And... uh..."

"Didn't quite make the cut, huh?" I finished for her. She started nodding slowly.

"Yeah, they washed me out. That's why I don't want to pick a fight with the Courier..." she let out a single, defeated laugh. "I know I'd lose."

"Hmmm..." I grumbled, finishing up my work at the terminal. I pulled out the Platinum Chip, keeping it out of sight, and rolling it across the top of my fingers before plugging it into the console.

"You know, despite what you may have heard about me..." I said, doing my best to distract her from the sounds of the console doing what it needed to do. "I'm not a bad guy. I'm not trying to fight the NCR, but I am trying to bring down Caesar's Legion. And this is gonna help with that." I pulled the Platinum Chip back out and surreptitiously put it back in its hiding spot.

"All I've heard is that the Courier causes chaos wherever he goes," Mags started lifting the rifle again... but not quite at me. I reached into my duster to pull out the Big Mountain Transportalponder! and kept it hidden from sight as I stepped away from the console.

"Well, I suppose that's true enough..." I nodded at her, slowly walking towards her, positioning myself directly under the skylight. I was going to need that clear line of sight to open sky in a second. "But think about this: if I wanted to get in here, and I truly didn't care about the collateral damage... we wouldn't be having this conversation right now."

She stared at me in confusion, apparently taking my advice to heart and actually thinking about that, as she lowered her rifle again. I gave her a halfhearted salute with my free hand.

"Take care of yourself, Mags," I said, pulling the trigger on the Transportalponder! "You're a good kid."

The world disappeared in a flash.

A few minutes later, a burst of lightning ripped open the universe, and I appeared on a hill somewhere very far away from the substation. The lights of Vegas were shining off in the distance, and a securitron with Yes Man's face was waiting for me.

"Hi there!" he said with a wave. "Follow me!" He turned on his single wheel, and started rolling away.

"So, where'd this securitron come from?" I asked, keeping pace with the robot. "You send him all the way down here from Vegas?"

"Of course not!" Yes Man laughed. "This is one of the old Victor units! They've been on standby ever since his AI was scrubbed from the system!"

"Is that right?" I muttered. It didn't take us long to get to our destination: a ridge with Vegas in clear view off in the distance.

"See that?" Yes Man pointed at the scene with one of his claw arms. "Vegas, right? Same as always but not tonight!" He started counting down, and I folded my arms across my chest in anticipation. When he got to the "One!" suddenly every single light in Vegas flickered and became dim. That... didn't seem right.

"Yes Man? Was that supposed to happen?" I asked. Yes Man didn't answer. He just kept pointing and with good reason, as it turns out. Suddenly, all the lights in Vegas turned back on again, much brighter than they had been before. Several spotlights around the edges of the Lucky 38 turned on and shined brightly into the sky, further exaggerating the monolithic nature of the spire sticking out of the cityscape. Even Freeside seemed to be getting in on the action, glowing brighter than I'd ever seen before.

"Did it work?" I heard Emily's voice buzzing in my ear. "How does it look?" I nodded slowly, surveying the impressive sight off in the distance with a smug, satisfied smile.

"Like Christmas, but with more... me."