Fallout 3 - Beautiful Stranger

Chapter 21 Part 1

As soon as the system booted, Patience took the cable, that Moira gave them, from Valrie and attached it to her Pip-Boy and then to the relevant socket inside the terminal. Nothing happened for a few seconds and then the Pip-Boy screen began to flash in unison with the terminal screen. The same words ticker-taped onto both screens.

"Pip-Boy 3000. Vault Designation: X302. Resident Number: 1138. Accessing ..." Patience drummed her fingers on the side of the terminal as the blank, green cursor flashed in a steady rhythm. After a few seconds, the writing continued. "Data Transfer Complete. Proceed To Location Two."

They waited for almost a minute more, watching the cursor blink on the terminal screen, before looking at each other, confused. The Pip-Boy screen returned to its normal set of options and that was all that happened. Patience tapped the 'Return' key several times, to no avail.

"Is that fucking it?" Valrie reached over, turning Patience's wrist to look at her Pip-Boy. "So, this is what? Location one? The place you were supposed to go to is the place you just decided to go to to get answers. Am I the only one that thinks that's a little too fucking convenient?"

"I don't know. Maybe my memory is still there and when Vault-Tec HQ was mentioned, my mind connected to it?" Patience typed in several words into the keyboard with no response. "But I don't know where location two is and I still don't have any damned answers!"

"That's where I come in." Vincent stepped forward, pulling a holo-tape from one of his pouches. He held it in the air, shaking it like a penalty card in a sports game. "You're Pip-Boy broke the lock, this will open up the door. Crack the system wide open so I can grab the info I'm here for. Once the system is open, and I have what I came for, you can dig all you want into the files."

He placed the holo-tape into the slot on the computer bank and the entire system began to light up. All the cabinets on the level below began to whirr, a high-pitched buzz echoing around the entire area. Soon, the activity died down and the terminal screen showed the words 'Access Granted'.

"What's he doing?" Gia pushed her head in-between Valrie and Patience. "What are X-Vaults?"

"Four hidden vaults. Beyond top secret." Patience read the screen as Vincent worked. "He's copying all the locations, details about their experiments, inventories. Dear god! Weapons. Moriarty's after weapons!"

"Yes, he is." Vincent, concentrating upon the screen, couldn't see the horrified look on Patience's face. "I give a copy of this info to the Brotherhood of Steel, Moriarty calls up all his cronies to clear these vaults out and the Brotherhood takes out the biggest group of arms dealers in the Wasteland in one fell swoop."

"And what if Moriarty is lot fucking smarter than you and the Brotherhood think he is?" Valrie, knowing Moriarty better than any of them, echoed Patience's horrified look. "What if he gets away with this shit? How many people will die because of this information?"

"People die all the time!" Vincent turned towards Valrie, snapping at her. "This way, we get Moriarty and the Brotherhood get the most advanced weapons around. Think of what they could achieve with that. The Super Mutants? Gone. Boom."

"At what price?" Patience itched to place her hand on her sidearm. She cast the thought aside. Not now. "How many innocents will die once these new weapons are unleashed? By you, Moriarty, the Brotherhood. It doesn't matter who has these weapons, I guarantee innocents will die."

"Acceptable losses for the greater good." Vincent pointed at the screen as the terminal continued copying files to the holo-tape. "This will bring peace. The Brotherhood of Steel will finally bring peace to this ... this fucking shit-hole."