Part 30: Loose Ends

Update 30: Loose Ends



Although it was tempting to rush off, we weren't going to catch flying vehicles in a Highwayman, especially when they'd left days earlier. They wanted my tribesmen for a reason, so they weren't likely to kill them out of hand. In the meantime, we were right next to the Toxic Caves.



I had enough time to repair the generator while Marcus was stumping through the glowing puddles that lined the floor. Somehow, I don't think the radiation bothered him very much.



The new electronic lockpick let me through the door to the elevator, although it was a bit trickier than I thought. There was also something that looked almost like an electrical trap in the doorway, but it didn't go off so it wasn't exactly a problem.



The rocket to everyone's collective face from the still functioning security robot was, however, a problem. That thing had been waiting in the dark for someone or something to come down for decades. Unfortunately for it, the first living creatures to come down the elevator were heavily armed enough to tear it apart in a few seconds.




Inside there was a stock of ammunition, energy cells, and some improved combat armor along with another Bozar. We didn't really have much user for another one, but it was sure to be valuable so it came along.



Our next stop was in the New Reno area. Angela was a bit upset with me for some reason. Somebody had cleared out the bodies from our last visit, but left all of the weapons and equipment in some kind of bizarre memorial.



Seeing her reminded me of safes, since that was where she'd kept her jet supply. It stood to reason that her dad had one as well and I hadn't went back up to crack it after I was done killing him.



"Huh, Bishop had a porn stash in his safe. You'd think that he would feel like he had to hide it."

"Mebbe it's his favorite? Got de twins in there or something?"

"You could be right, I think I had that issue. Hey, that map looks like it's for somewhere near Vault City."

"And I think we've been there, too. We'll pay them a quick visit once we hit the depot."



Now that we could get into the backup elevator there was a lot more to explore in the Sierra Army Depot, without having to pull out somebody's goo covered eye every time I wanted to use an elevator.



The real shocker was finding out that the computer system on the lower levels was not only working, but intelligent enough to have a conversation.



Given that it was supposed to protect the Depot from invaders, I was just happy that it didn't order all the guard robots we'd passed to open fire as soon as it realized it didn't know who I was.



Or it could have just been being subtle about it. There were raised plates in the middle of the corridor that were almost certainly linked to something nasty.



There was also yet another preserved eyeball in a storage locker inside an office at the end of the corridor. They really had a thing about eyeballs in this base, but there were also a number of textbooks so I couldn't complain too much.



When we reached the central computer it was a giant system that looked exactly like the one I'd seen in Vault 13. Skynet wanted me to put together a robotic body so that it could leave the Depot and explore the world. There was a body it could use here on Level 3, but it needed a brain from Level 4.



That was the end of the 3rd floor, so we hustled down to the 4th. It was somehow more dingy and dilapidated than the rest of the building, although that might have just been that the lights were all down. A skeleton with a gigantic head was curled up on the floor next to a science book, and I really had to wonder what the hell they'd been doing here.



An operating table covered with rust brown stains stood off in one of the rooms, with a cluster of automated tools above it. The fact was, the Sierra Army Depot wasn't a fortress. It was a lab.




And they'd been up to some crazy things. The computer revealed that the operating table was actually an organ extraction machine, and had settings for a number of different species as well as room to add more. The only remotely safe use it seemed to have was removing an appendix, and even then I wasn't too sure about what route it would take reach a person's appendix.

For the curious, you can abandon a companion in here, close the door, and then use the machine on them. Given the nature of what you're doing this gives you a pretty hefty hit to your karma, and giving Myron an unexpected colonectomy is a great way to kill him. For some unknown reason you can also write things like "mutant" or "ghoul" on the dial to kill those types and it will work.



The next room had a computer that controlled access to a vast storehouse of viruses, organs, and cadavers. I was only here for a brain, but I didn't see a reason not to pull out a body while I was at it.

"Is he… is he cackling?"

"We be okay as long as he not try to make the machine put things into people instead of take them out."



"Awww, there's only one body."

"I'm not sure if I'm disappointed or relieved at this point."




Dobbs had been injured on the front lines of the Great War and plopped into a vat of biomedical gel as an experimental treatment to regenerate his body. As soon as he explained that, Dobbs ran off to rejoin his unit. We didn't even have time to tell him that the war had been over for more than a century and that nobody had won.



Not that it mattered, since it turns out there was a reason the regeneration process was experimental. He got about 20 steps down the hallway before melting into a pile of goo.



On the plus side, for some reason he had Limited Edition Red Ryder BB gun on him. Somebody was sure to want it as a collector's item, if nothing else.

The Red Ryder LE is a strange gun. Its damage is a straight 25 points, and it can hold 100 rounds of ammunition. The ammo has no modifiers either for or against it, and the gun has a range of 32 which is longer than most pistols and shorter than most rifles. Be careful, or you'll shoot your eye out.



As I turned back to the console and brought up the brain retrieval interface, something went wrong… I had to rush to enter a system correction, even though I only had the faintest idea of what the system interface should even look like.




It didn't go as well as it might have.

And this, for the curious, is what people have referred to as the single hardest check in the game. In order to succeed you need 121% Science skill. Anything under 90% means you won't even get the human brain and will be stuck with one of the other brains, which are barely functional. The quality of brain you get determines how good the Skynet robot will be.



There wasn't a chance to pick more than one, due to a really unfortunate malfunction, so I went with the obvious choice and took the human brain. I didn't really want to ask any questions about who it had belonged to.



When we went back to Skynet for further instructions there was some kind of a glitch, so we had to figure out the rest the hard way.



Luckily the computer hooked up to the robot body had a checklist. We had the brain and there was some biomed gel conveniently located in the same room as the body.



Without any reference as to where the spare motivators were kept, we went with the caveman solution of just destroying every robot we could find until we found one with a compatible motivator.



It wasn't that hard, since Skynet had chosen a fairly common body type. The little brain bots were packing combat shotguns, which irritated Cassidy since he didn't see why a robot should have a weapon as nice as his.



After that, it was just a matter of plugging everything in and hooking up the connections before flipping the big lever.



"It's alive!"

"Yeah, but it doesn't look like everything's ticking over too good."



"Best of luck out there, little buddy."

"You're making the right choice."

"You got to let something go, and if it not come back it was never yours."

"Sure. I just find having a robot with a human brain following around on my heels really creepy."



If you get the best brain, the robot is one of the deadliest small guns combatants in the game. His body gives him protection equivalent to Metal Armor MK II, and you can order him to do a full repair outside of combat to restore all of his HP. One problem is that his arms count as weapons, which can make some people who don't like being approached when you have weapons in hand a bit nervous. With the human brain it still functions as a mediocre fighter, but anything less than that and you've got a pack mule.



The reward for completing his body brings us to right below a level, and a judicious use of the doctor skill kicks us over. Points go Small Guns and Energy Weapons.