The Survivor’s Guide to the Wasteland

*CRUNCH*

The sound of brittle bone being crushed followed after I stomped my power armor boots onto a mole rat's head, splattering brain, blood, and body bits all over the ground. What remained of Rufus' overgrown cousin spasmed a few times before stiffening and halting any more twitching. Disgusted by the gore from the wasteland's creation, I quickly stepped off the corpse and tried to clean the soles by dragging it across the dirt. Once I was done tidying myself, I started walking uphill again to the satellite station.

I walked past five similar mole rat remains with varying body parts crushed. The pack had noticed me when I was approaching the station and decided to attack me despite the power armor I was in. They might be bigger, but it seems their brains didn't get any bigger despite their increased body mass. At least they serve as a good source of XP. After killing the last mole rat and the journey here, I gained another two levels and was a fifth of the way through level 23.

The mole rats' claws and teeth would harmlessly bounce off the hardened steel of my T45 suit in an almost comical way. Since ammo was scarce, I solved the problem by literally stomping it out. Honestly, I slightly regret not taking the cleaner option and just shooting the mole rats, but waste not want not, I guess.

After leaving Isabel and the confines of the robotics disposal ground, I arrived at Satellite Station Olivia after about an hour of walking in the southeast direction. The journey was pretty uneventful, with the only encounters being with a pack of mongrels and a small mob of radstags. Power armor made taking care of the mongrels a simple task, but its bulky frame and loud noises spooked the Radstags before I could get my hands on some wasteland venison. After those encounters, it was just a straight shot to the station.

The first thing I noticed about the station was the ginormous satellite dish, followed by the husk of a downed vertibird northwest of the buildings. I was ecstatic to find a partial suit of T51 power armor near the crashed aircraft. The frame only had the helmet, left arm, and chest armor, but they were in much better condition than the suit of T45 I found in Concord. If I remember correctly, the T51's shell was made of a composite material, which doesn't rust like the steel used for the T45.

The T51 was an improvement on the T45, which was a rushed product in response to the Chinese invasion of Alaska. It was lighter, more rounded, and had better hydraulics, making it a considerable improvement over what I was wearing. So much so that I was tempted to swap the pieces out, but I decided against it for now and just stored the pieces in my inventory.

In the game, If you wanted to mismatch armor, all you had to do was equip the pieces you wanted in the frame, and video game logic would make it work. But power armor was supposed to be complicated equipment. If I returned to Isabel with a suit of mixed armor, she might get suspicious of how I could do that in the field without the right tools. 

Eventually, I'll have to tell Isabel about my powers, but I don't want to do it until I'm sure she won't freak out when I do. She doesn't seem like the type, and if anything, her naturally curious and pragmatic mind will just see it as something interesting to research and take advantage of. But I didn't know that for sure, and that little uncertainty makes me hesitate confessing to Isabel.

I've come to really like Isabel in the few days we've known each other. I never knew how much I was attracted to passion until I watched Isabel use her intelligence and resourcefulness to build robots. Despite how capable she is, Isabel isn't boastful or self-assured. In fact, Isabel's so naive and bashful that everything she does is framed with a cute shyness. It also doesn't hurt that she's so easy on the eyes. I think we can be great friends, maybe more, but telling her now will probably only make her wary of me and keep her distance.

While thinking about how to reveal my powers to Isabel, I reached the top of the hill. Looking up, I saw the massive satellite dish cast a shadow to my left, completely covering the concrete bunker entrance and almost half of that side of the hill. The dish was propped up by a large concrete column with stairs wrapped around leading to an office up top. Deciding to check out what was on the outside first, I went up the stairs.

The old metal creaked under the weight of my power armor, so I was taking my time, careful to not put too much strain on the old infrastructure. The power armor would probably dampen the fall, but I would still hate to drop from two stories up. Once up there, I found two small ammo boxes, one wooden crate, a broken-down shelf, and a table.

The ammo boxes had some 10mm, .45, .308, and 12 gauge buckshot, while the wooden crates had old military uniforms. Most of the Air Force fatigues were in tatters, presumably eaten by insects or moths, but I found a few sets that were in decent condition. Rounding out the room was a gold lighter I found in the drawer of the small round table that still had a functional flint and striker. The loot from the office alone wasn't much, but it was a good start.

I walked out again and looked past the railing down below, trying to see if I could spot anything from a higher vantage point. There was a wooden shack in the game, presumably put up by Ack-Ack and her gang as an outpost outside. Ack-Ack was the first raider boss most people encountered. She and her gang killed the Abernathy's daughter, who were farmers nearby. You were tasked with going inside the satellite station, where they made their base, and retrieving a keepsake of the family. I couldn't find any shacks. Hopefully, that meant this station hadn't been looted yet and was empty.

I returned down the creaky stairs before looking for the door into the underground bunker. Eventually, I found the door separating me from further exploration. There was also a hole next to the door where a window would have gone, but it was too small for me to get through with the power armor. 

Despite the rust peeking out from behind the blue paint and deep pitting, the door was still structurally sound. The lack of use had seized the hinges, and I thought I might have to find something to cut it open. It took a few bashes with power armor before it finally gave way.

The aboveground room was probably built for security purposes and was underwhelming, only having two overturned desks inside. Further inside was another blue door and a warning sign saying the area was restricted to authorized personnel only. Rifling through the desks only produced some pieces of faded paper. I still stored them since I could use them as kindling to start fires in a pinch.

Once I was done skimming through the drawers, I moved on to the other door. The door inside was in better condition. A simple pull on the handles was all it took to open it up. On the other side was more concrete and a short stairway leading down and to the right. A soft whirring noise started a few seconds after I opened the doors, and a lamp above me flickered on. I guess whatever energy system the place used was still functional.

Once at the bottom of the stairs, I found four red lines at shin height near the end of the corridor. It took me a few seconds to realize it was a laser trip wire, and the red light came from an emitter on the right side. The laser tripwire by itself wasn't anything of concern; what was of concern was the trap it was connected to.

Looking around, I could spot a weirdly shaped silver object roughly the size of a large bowl hanging from the roof past the corridor. On top of the silver bowl was a white cylinder, with smaller yellow cylinders poking out on the sides. Bingo, the tripwire seems to be the switch for a tesla arc.

Tesla arcs were traps that used fusion cells to arc lightning bolts into the nearest target, dealing energy damage. Getting closer to the tesla arc and focusing on it suddenly gave me a window, asking me if I wanted to disarm the trap. I mentally confirmed, and the yellow fusion cells on the outside disappeared the next second.

Green text also popped up in the upper left corner of my vision, telling me I gained xp for disarming a trap, and 4 fusion cells were added to my inventory. Pulling up my pip-boy showed that the fusion cells had teleported into my inventory. Walking over to the tripwire gave me the same option. After confirming, the lasers blinked on and off before turning off and rewarding me with two pieces of crystal.

The xp gained was small enough to be insignificant, but the materials could be helpful later. I have no use for fusion cells or crystals, but Isabel could probably do something handy with them. It's also nice to know that my bullshit powers allowed me to stealthily disable traps, even if I didn't understand how they worked.

Walking past the corridor, I found myself in a room dimly lit by two lights. One of the lights illuminated an old terminal that still seemed to be working and had a wire that ran from the back of the terminal. Tracing that wire led to another door, this one clearly more heavy-duty than the ones outside. I approached the old-timey terminal first. 

The Fallout's version of a personal computer was a boxy contraption, like a 90s computer from my world. The entire thing was caked in dust, and I couldn't make out anything on the screen or the text on the buttons. Since I couldn't type with a suit of T45 on and had to clean the thing up anyways, I hopped out of the power armor.

When I had sufficiently dusted the atom-punk desktop with an old t-shirt from my inventory, I started looking for how to turn it on. Pressing the buttons didn't turn it on, so I started looking for switches. Eventually, I turned one of the knobs on the side, starting the machine up.

Lines of code in green blitzed past the screen. I watched this happen for about a minute until, finally, the screen turned all black except for a flashing green line at the top left corner. Once that happened, my system gave me another prompt, asking if I wanted to attempt hacking an advanced terminal's security system. Thankfully I had the hacker perk, or else I don't think it would even let me attempt cracking it.

After confirming that I would like to give it a shot, a bunch of random letters and symbols popped up on the screen. At the very top were the words 'USAF SATELLITE STATION OLIVIA'. Right below were two lines telling me that a password was required and that I had four attempts remaining. Browsing through the big chunk of characters in the remaining portion gave me several words I could choose from. 

First, I used the arrow keys to scan every line for any '{}' and or lines of code encapsulated by '{}', '[]', or '()'. Finding these bits of programming allowed me to either remove a dud password or reset my tries. Then, after finding every one of these bits of code, I was left with only three six-letter words: BOOKED, HARMED, and PURSUE. 

BOOKED was the first option, so I highlighted it and pressed enter. The terminal made two identical beeping noises, and on the right side, I could see 'ENTRY DENIED' and 'Likeness=2'. Since of the two remaining options, only HARMED shared two letters with BOOKED, I highlighted that as my next option and entered it.

The terminal made another two beeping noises, but this time the second one was higher pitched. I saw my experience tick up again, and the terminal alerted me that the password was accepted. The screen then changed again, and I was given the option to open three files. The first was the check-in log, the second was daily briefings, and the last was an option to open the intel room.

Quickly skimming through the first two options showed nothing interesting. The check-in log was just that, a check-in log. Names of people long gone and their ranks were listed for the 22nd of October, the day before the bombs dropped. I guess the shift for the 23rd never made it before being vaporized into ashes.

The daily briefing was similarly uninteresting, with the only thing of note being that the lower storage room was supposed to be fumigated due to pests on the 25th of October. This reminded me that the storage room, where you would have found the Abernathy's trinket and the keys to the intel room if you didn't hack the terminal, was infested with giant cockroaches. 

The storage room floor was covered in some flammable fluid, and if you fired a round at the cockroaches, it would set the room ablaze. The fire would roast all the roaches and put the player on fire if they were too close. Roaches and a small fire are nothing power armor couldn't handle, but just like with the tesla arc, if I can avoid getting hurt, I should.

Moving on from the daily briefings, I clicked on the open intel room option. The screen warned me about the intel room being off-limits to intel officers, analysts, and senior officers. That seemed strange since those three groups seemed like the only people that should have access. If they are not allowed, who the hell was?

Deciding to not worry about it, I moved on. Once I clicked the option to open the intel room, I heard a loud *kerchunk* noise behind me after I got up from the terminal and turned around just in time to see the heavy metal door swing open. Giddy to see if the loot inside was as good as the game, I got back into my power armor and walked over.

Two skeletons lay on the floor, a stark reminder that people were trapped inside the station when the bombs dropped. The intel room had various desks, broken terminals, and cabinets. The tile floor contained documents, clipboards, office supplies, and cardboard boxes. The center of the room was occupied by two low metal shelves, one of which had what I was looking for, another mini-nuke.