Capítulo 140: Rust and Rats
The cave was dark, the only light available was the beams streaming in from the shoddy door to the outside. Afton activated his Pipboy light so they could at least see where they were going.
The cave itself was more like an airlock for the vault, the large vault door sitting at the end of it already opened for some reason. Afton was expecting to have to hack a console to get in or something.
Though, he wondered why the door was open. There were only a few reasons why this would be this case. The residents could've been feeling from something inside, or the door controls may be broken... Perhaps they simply just forgot to seal it again when they finally left the vault?
"I'm not liking the look of this already." Karl says, wiping some dust off of the entrance with a finger to check how long it'd been open for.
Afton gives a light punch to his shoulder, "If we're scared of an open door then we might'as well just kill ourselves now."
Inside the vault entrance was the control panel for the door aswell as a lot of trash... Paper, metal scrap, as well as food and drink packages littered the dust-covered floor. Even the machinery responsible for resealing the vault didn't look operable due to the rust that'd gathered.
"Place looks abandoned... For a while too." Karl mutters as he tosses some spent ammunition casing away. "Looks like they were tryin' to fight somethin' as well... Or maybe some scavengers found trouble?"
Heading further inside Afton could vaguely hear the sound of something squeaking? As well as the pattering of many small feet. His signals the other's who ready their weapons as whatever it is approaches their position.
...
After thirty seconds they spot something coming around the corner... Well, more than just "something", as eight huge rat-like creatures spot them and start dashing towards them.
Afton scowls at the rats, if they were regular ones they wouldn't be much of a problem, but these one's had mangy-looking fur, bright turquoise eyes, and brutally sharp-looking teeth. Without a moment of hesitation, he draws Lucky and That Gun before opening fire on them.
Boone and Karl fire with their respective weapons as well, the hallway making it like shooting fish in a barrel. In a couple seconds the vault went silent, the sound of the rats ceasing just as the bullets stop flying.
"See? Not so bad, just a couple rats." Afton says as he holsters his weapons after reloading them.
Karl just shakes his head, "I still think this is a bad idea..."
Afton ignores Karl's apprehensions and continues onwards, going through the various rooms of the vault. There's a canteen, medbay, reactor room... As much as he'd like to dismantle the whole place for parts to experiment with, he knew it'd take a huge amount of time and effort to do it. The place was designed to survive a nuclear holocaust, so he'd need specialised tools to gain access to the more valuable components held within.
Not to mention he'd need a couple military-grade trucks to actually transport everything out... He'd probably need to blow the cave entrance open to allow him to pull the larger parts out. Shaking his head, he decides to just grab the ventilation component and any other interesting loot they might find.
As to what this specific vault was designed to do? Afton had no idea. Usually it'd be fairly obvious, but this place was fairly innocuous. Though, there was one thing that griped him... That was the ungodly amount of booby traps some bastard had hidden in this place.
If Karl wasn't travelling with him there'd probably be bits and pieces of him covering the staircase. Some chucklefuck thought it was a good idea to connect a tripwire with some grenades hung from the top of it.
Fortunately, Karl had been leading and managed to spot it before anyone tripped it. Allowing the group to gain a couple grenades to use or sell in future.
The place as entirely infested with giant rats, they'd somehow managed to get into the food stores and turned the place into a nest. Their teeth didn't seem strong enough to chew through the vaults reinforced walls though, preventing them from creating a complex tunnelling system... It'd be one hundred times harder to deal with them if they were able to just pop out of the ground or behind them at will.
The further they progressed into the vault the more rats they disturbed. Afton had lent Boone his sawed-off shotgun as his hunting rifle really wasn't suited for the kind of combat they were engaging in.
It wasn't all bad though, in most of the trapped rooms there were many boxing of ammo just layng around, allowing the group to scavenge quite a good haul. The ammunition they'd already found would be worth the trouble of travelling through this place alone, but Afton had also found a Pugilism Illustrated, a skillbook to be put simply.
[+3 Unarmed]
There were a few still active terminals placed around the vault that Afton had managed to hack into, his curiosity had gotten the better of him and he couldn't restrain himself from finding out what'd happened here...
Vault 11 was, a shit shot to put it bluntly. Apparently there was some sort of annual sacrifice that the residents were forced to do. They'd vote for the Overseer of the vault and that person would enter a sacrificial chamber after their term was done. Afton wasn't sure why they thought putting the person that'd eventually be killed in power was a good idea, but Vault dwellers tended to be somewhat stupid.
Obviously, this eventually devolved into some sort of political warfare where factions would slander the other's to make sure their preferred candidate was chosen. Judging by how many corpses were lying around the place, he guessed that violence had been the only answer in the end.
This would also explain the many booby traps, if the vault dwellers had been fighting with each other then booby-trapping places to prevent other factions from gaining access would be a relatively smart thing to do.
Shaking his head, Afton scours the terminals for some information on the location of the ventilation component before moving on, the other's had gotten bored enough just waiting around while he played with the terminal.
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Capítulo 141: A Dirty Bomb Maker
After Afton had finally found the location of the ventilation component they started moving again... Apparently it was in the lowest floor beside some reactors in a locker. It was the backup component of the vault as the main one was still in use, obviously, he couldn't just cut through meters of reinforced steel to get at it, so he was left with only this option. If he was able to go through the steel, he could've gathered all the component from this vault alone.
So, the trio continued, shooting rats whenever they appeared and occasionally having Karl dismantle traps. The loot they found around the place was generally not worth taking, rotten food, alcohol, etc would have to be left behind. The last caches of ammo would be taken however. That wasn't all though, Afton had stumbled across a rugby ball-shaped object that had the radioactive symbol prominently pained on it.
As he was going to touch it Karl immediately slapped his hand away.
"DON'T!" he exclaimed, shocking Afton and Boone with the ferocity of his yell.
Afton gives an angry, but subdued look to Karl, the man wouldn't do something like that without reason so there was no point being mad about it. "What was that for?"
Karl shoves his finger in the direction of the object he'd found, "That. Is a nuclear bomb." he states heavily, causing the others to pale slightly.
"You serious?" Boone quietly asks, wondering if he should run and hope the vault would shield against the blast should it go off.
Kalr nods, "Yeah, they call em mini-nukes. No idea what crazy bastards keep making them, but the NCR had been finding them all over the wasteland. They investigated it to find whoever did it for obvious reasons... If they got caught by the Legion, the slaver's would literally be able to construct nuclear bombs."
"This vault didn't seem to have been scavenged by the looks of it, if this thing is here then one of the former vault-dwellers might've made it." Afton says after thinking a moment.
"Youknow, I think you might be right about that kid... Should look for the names of anyone who managed to leave and try to find them. Depending on who they are, it might be worth having 'em join us." Karl mutters after a moment of contemplation.
"And if they're an enemy, they won't even know we're coming for them. Sure, I can get on board wit that." Afton grins.
[Quest accepted : Find the mystery bomb maker]
Ignoring the notification Afton looks back down at the mini-nuke, "What should we do with this? I can think of a couple ways we could use it. All of which would be incredibly satisfying."
Karl rubs his chin, "Let me look it over for a minute... Can you check if any radiation is leaking from it with your Pip-thing?" he asks and Afton nods, holding his Pipboy over it with the Geiger counter not moving an inch.
"It doesn't seem to be damaged in any way... I'm not willing to crack it open to see if the internals are fine either... It's up to you kid, I know I'm not going to carry it around. If it goes off we're all fucked anyway."
Afton shrugs and uses his Pipboy inventory to check it,
[Mini-Nuke]
Value : 3000
...
Not much information is given apparently, but, since it'd not called "Defective Mini-Nuke", or "Damaged Mini-Nuke", he decides it's probably safe... If you take into account his [Mechanicus] Perk then he doubted it'd randomly go off while he was carrying it.
Karl and Boone cautiously watch as Afton shoves it into his backpack, "Alright, we've got another thing to do now, check any terminals for information on this 'mystery bomb maker', hopefully they're friendly, but if not I don't see a reason why we should let someone so dangerous live." he says.
The group continue to explore the place, hacking every terminal the come across but not finding much information aside from the catastrophic last "election" that occurred in this place. Apparently, one Overseer decided to make the sacrifice selection random, this caused one of the faction to stage a coup, killing most of the inhabitants.
The find the overseers office but there isn't much inside... The terminal is password protected and too difficult to hack for Afton, so they just head to the lower floor instead. Unfortunately it seemed that the final coupe had damaged some water lines, flooding the entire floor.
Afton dips his toe into the water and hears the familiar clicking of his Geiger counter. Clearly the water was irradiated, if only slightly. He sighs and looks at the others, "What now?"
Karl shrugs, "I don't suppose whatever your looking for is down there?"
Afton slowly nods, "It is... I'll have to go swimming for it, I can't really use the radiation suit as its not designed for underwater use." he mutters to himself, finally dropping his bag and dressing down into his underwear. He takes out some Rad X and gulps it down before handing the duo a Radaway, "Once I'm out, give that to me... If I don't come back in, say, two hours? Leave me behind." he states.
Truthfully, Afton wasn't all that keen to go swimming down there. But, if there was look to be had, he would have it. Without further adieu he made his way down the flooded staircase, taking a big breath of air before descending.
His vision was slightly blurry, and the lights that had previously illuminated the hallways were unsurprisingly broken, providing a rather scary black hallway for him to swim down. His Pipboy light allowing him to see somewhat, but it still wasn't a comfortable journey.
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